“There’s a very short distance between pain and humor,” Danish film editor Olivier Bugge Coutté explained when asked about the bittersweet quality in the much-loved movies of Joachim Trier.
Bugge Coutté has been friends with Trier for 30 years and has edited all the director’s films, including 2021’s “The Worst Person in the World” and 2025’s “Sentimental Value,” for which he has been nominated for an Oscar. His credits also include tonal blend-ups such as 2011’s “Beginners” and 2024’s “The Apprentice.”
“We often say that a film shouldn’t be hard for people to watch, no matter what the subject is,” he said. “So we love to balance the feelings.”
And the feelings between Bugge Coutté and Trier are long-lasting. “We’re like brothers,” the editor said. “He knows my two ex-wives and all the girlfriends in between, I know his wife and all his girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. Our kids play together. It’s a family.”
“Sentimental Value,” which like all of Trier’s films is difficult to describe in a short synopsis, focuses on a stage actress (Renate Reinsve) and her relationship with her introverted sister (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), their charismatic father (Stellan Skarsgård) and an American actress visiting Oslo (Elle Fanning).
All four of those actors were nominated for Oscars, in addition to noms for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature. We begun our chat with Bugge Coutté by pointing out that his first-time nomination is somewhat unique within his category.
TheWrap: There’s a pattern in the Best Editing category to nominate big spectacles, like musicals, action films and war dramas. Your peers recognized the nuance and skill of what you did.
Bugge Coutté: It’s been fantastic. I honestly wasn’t expecting this, which is why I wasn’t on the Zoom link with everyone when the nominations were announced.
I’m extremely proud to be nominated. Whatever happens, this is so fulfilling, because I think it’s amazing that other editors voted for me. When it’s my peers, the ones that can really judge the craftsmanship, I feel extremely honored that they looked at the film and voted for it.
Early in the movie, there’s a scene where Nora (Renate Reinsve) has a panic attack before going out on stage in front of an audience. It’s scary but also darkly humorous, as it all unfolds. How did you achieve that?
We didn’t want it to be a pure horror scene, because we’re not like that. It’s important for us that we don’t numb audiences with all the pain and all the sorrow of people crying all the time.
With a scene like that one, we don’t make jokes for the sake of the joke but we’re trying to balance the tone. We decided to start the scene with her panic attack, instead of building up to it. And even when we’re working in the editing room, we are very focused for one hour and then we start watching some stupid Instagram accounts and we start laughing and then we work again. That’s how it works for us.
In Trier’s movies, where we can feel how the characters share so many memories with each other. Is that what it is like for you two?
Completely. I have a whole scheme of jokes and a whole way that I talk, which stays in a box until I start editing one of Joachim’s films. And then everything comes out and we talk to each other like that cliché of meeting family again.
But it’s true. We’ve been friends for so long and we know all the references, especially all the film references. We’ve been loving the same films or hating different things and fighting over sequences in other films. You know, I thought a film was great and he thought it sucked and we had that fight in the year 2000 and in 2007 and we picked it up again in 2016. But it’s like fighting with your brother. We’ve evolved together and our friendship has formed me as an artist.
Can you remember specific movie things that you guys have jousted about?
It’s often around the subject of how much to push into feelings. Sometimes I have a tendency to push hard into feelings, and other times it’s the opposite, with Joachim telling me “It’s too much.” I remember I asked him about Elle Fanning riding away on a horse in France, “Are we sure we want to have that?” And he was right about that one.
What was a scene from this film that didn’t make it into the final cut?
That sequence when Elle Fanning meets Stellan Skarsgård at the film festival in France, when we first cut the film that was 26 minutes long. And we knew it had to be cut down. Everything with Elle Fanning and her backstory was great, but it was impossible to be away from Nora, the protagonist, for 26 minutes and then come back and be still engaged in the same way. So we trimmed it by 10 minutes or so.
Many have used the word novelistic to describe Trier’s films. With this one, it reminded me of the Kurt Vonnegut phrase from “Slaughterhouse Five,” about being “unstuck in time.”
I like that. We’ve used chapter headings in other movies and here we use the cuts to black, which perhaps can be described as novelistic. Normally, in films, scenes follow scenes. It’s setup, payoff, there’s a cause and effect chain that goes all the way down. But in Joachim’s films, you go on side trips. And those cuts to black are like a reset.
It resets time and space when you cut to black. And when the story starts again and you’re caught up, it could be like a month later, a year later, or it could even be in the past.
Or we could be watching a movie-within-the-movie without knowing it, which happens in “Sentimental Value.”
Yes. We like to throw the audience into a situation where they’re slightly lost and the scene develops. And the audience can quickly works it out.
I wanted to ask about two specific moments. One is the wonderful wordless moment of peace between Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård, when they have a cigarette together outside.
You know, that was a humorous scene originally. They came outside and Stellan’s character started saying, “I think his mother is hitting on me,” and she says, “Oh, please don’t sleep with her, as well.” You’ve been sleeping with way too many women.”
In the editing, we didn’t want to joke too much and that moment became what it is now. It’s like we listen to the engine of the car. If it needs more gasoline or a little less throttle, we adjust and find just the right balance.
And also, there’s a great payoff in the final moment of the film, when we see that Skarsgård’s character has hired the cinematographer, his good old friend, to shoot his new movie. Earlier we see them together and Skarsgård doesn’t want to hire him.
With that, Joachim and I see ourselves.
Oh really?
Totally. I tapped Joachim on the shoulder and I say, “Are you going to come one day to me and say to me that you’re working for Netflix now and they want you to look at another editor.” He says, “No, I can’t do the films without you.” We’re both very sensitive to that feeling.
And if you look at that early scene, when it’s the two old guys together, when Stellan tells him, “Netflix has asked me to look into other people,” any editor would tell you that the ending of that scene could have been cut earlier. Once they sipped the last whiskey, and they lean back, you can cut 23 times before we do. You can shorten that scene very easily. But we wanted to stay with them a bit longer.
It would not have been a Joachim Trier movie unless the old cinematographer comes back at the end, I think.
Yeah, as Joachim says, the film crew is his family. When we went to Cannes with the film, he made sure that as much of the crew as possible were invited. So yes, it’s a very emotional scene for us. We cherish that moment.
“Sentimental Value” is playing in theaters and available to rent on VOD
