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.