Rent Sentimental Value (2025)

Family Heirlooms, Emotional Debt - Sentimental Value review by griggs

I thought this would be a small, intimate family drama. Instead it’s a whole saga crammed into a little over two hours — decades in one house, plus divorce, affairs, estrangement, and the kind of generational baggage you inherit without signing for it.

Renate Reinsve keeps you locked in, and Stellan Skarsgård plays the father like a director who can’t stop directing: an auteur who blocks relationships like scenes, tweaks people’s lines, and expects everyone to hit their mark. He’s charming, funny, and quietly brutal once you clock how much of the family has been living inside his “story”. I got so invested in their messy orbit that Elle Fanning’s character almost felt like she’d wandered into a real family argument and nobody had the heart to stop her.

And then it lands the moment that properly got me: the sisters lying in bed together, finally being sisters, not characters in their father’s drama.

East Dulwich cinema-goers: I’m disappointed. That Piano Teacher / Irréversible gag was a perfect dark cinephile joke — and it landed like a hymn. Either you didn’t get it, or you’re too polite to laugh.

O.K - Sentimental Value review by KB

Not very uplifting and a bit long. I suppose it's quite well done but there isn't that much to the story.

Instantly forgettable family soap - Sentimental Value review by Alphaville

This intimate, theatrical drama has an occasional moment but hardly deserves the accolades it has received as a film. Basically it’s a downbeat, closely-observed soap with a family-issues plot that goes nowhere. Expect 129 minutes of long, lingering silences, a surfeit of emoting and a somnambulant score to help you drift off.

All the camera does is observe the actors talking (or just looking). Ironically, one of the main characters is a film director who hates TV soaps because (according to the subtitles) they lack ‘visuals’. To liven things up, there are occasional jumps back and forth in time, but they add nothing that isn’t covered in the present. If you’ve seen previous Trier films, you’ll know what to expect.