Cannes 2025 – sentimental value, the game of the family esthete (critic)

The director of Julie (in 12 chapters) returns with a more theoretical film but beautifully embodied by Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve.

Four years later Julie (in 12 chapters), Back to Cannes competition for Joachim Trier with Sentimental value. The Norwegian embarks again with him the Divine Renate Reisvne to tell the story of two sisters who see their father, director (it is important), return to their lives after very long years of absence. One accepts this unexpected return, the other (Reisvne), theater actress, cautiously keeps her distance. But the paddy Add to the disorder by offering him a role in his next film, which he wants to shoot in the family home. When she refuses, a young Hollywood actress (she Fanning) replaces her at raised foot, and things get worse …

Nice Bergmanian object in devil (it is no coincidence that Stellan Skarsgård, who played in the theater under the direction of Bergman, embodies this paternal revain) that this Sentimental valuefragile and theoretical film that works on low fire, traveled by all its long by a very beautiful idea: in this dysfunctional family, the only place of possible rapprochement is cinema. The paternal is only interested in his daughters in the moments when they find a place in his work, and the smiles are only exchanged in the presence of a DVD (formidable valve ofIrreversible Offered as a birthday present to a 10 year old kid), during a shooting or in the presence of a scenario.

Difficult not to imagine that it is Joachim Trier who tells himself a little in this case, swinging in passing some more or less fine spikes for journalists, Netflix and Hollywood cinema. There is in there a little side “guarantor of good taste” slightly narcissistic, but the filmmaker puts a lid on his ego as soon as he refocus on his central trio.

It is dazzling by moments, a little arid and long to others – it seemed wise to cut around twenty minutes – but the repetition of heady motifs ends up producing as much meaning as emotion. A film that we wear you (the opposite of Julie in 12 chapters) with a stellary stellan, and reisvne grandiose in a partition dowtempoall in a stretching look and murderous little sentences. A Girl Next Door Shattered by the disinterest of his Papounet in his place, but certain of the power to attract the smallest movement of his face. In this little game, even she Fanning cannot compete.

Sentimental valuefrom Joachim Trier, with Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård… Duration 2 h 12. Cinema outing on August 20.