The first time I saw Renate Reinsve on screen—really saw her—was in The Worst Person in the World, where she turned emotional indecision into something like ballet. Now, in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, she’s back, but this time the stakes are quieter, sharper, familial. The newly released trailer promises a film that lingers in the spaces between words, where silences carry the weight of decades.
Neon’s preview opens with a line that cuts deep: “I think it’s time you and I sat down and had a proper talk.” It’s delivered by Stellan Skarsgård’s Gustav, a faded director whose ego hasn’t dimmed alongside his fame. His daughters—Nora (Reinsve), a stage actress allergic to sentiment, and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), the pragmatic sister—are forced to reunite after their mother’s death. What follows isn’t just a family drama; it’s a negotiation of identity, art, and the roles we’re cast in long before we consent to them.
Trier, ever the poet of inner lives, frames the tension like a slow-motion collision. Nora refuses Gustav’s script, a would-be comeback vehicle dripping with autobiography, so he pivots to Hollywood’s Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), a choice that feels like betrayal. The sisters’ dynamic—Nora’s coiled resentment, Agnes’s quiet exhaustion—mirrors the way families fracture: not with explosions, but with sighs, sideways glances, and the things left unsaid.
The trailer’s genius lies in its restraint. No overwrought music, no manipulative cuts—just the raw material of great acting. Skarsgård, all weathered bravado, is perfectly matched by Reinsve’s Nora, whose every micro-expression screams, I love you, but I might never forgive you. And Fanning? She’s the wild card, the American disruptor who unwittingly exposes the family’s fault lines.
Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year, and it’s easy to see why. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt have crafted a story that’s both intimate and expansive, a film about art that never forgets the people behind it. It’s also, not incidentally, gorgeous—every frame feels like a memory half-remembered, soft at the edges but sharp where it hurts.
Neon will release the film in U.S. theaters on November 7, 2025. Mark the date. Then call your siblings.
