Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve on Parenting While Acting and Her Friendship With Elle Fanning

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0:17This is The Run-Through. I'm Chloe Mal. And I am in the studio with Marlee Marius herself. Hi. Hi. We had the fantastic opportunity to speak with Renata Reinsva for her new film, Sentimental Value, that came out last Friday, November 7th. And I have to say, I really loved this movie. It's an amazing sort of exploration of family and home and art and how you can kind of heal family wounds or not through art. life imitating art and art imitating life. So true. A film about film. A lot of metanarratives going on. We love that. We love that. Marlee, what, can you give us a quick synopsis of the movie?

1:07Yes. So it's basically the story of two sisters. One's named Nora. That's played by Renata Reinsva. The other is Agnes, played by Inga Ipsotililos. Nora is an actress Agnes is a researcher she has a young son they are kind of reunited with their estranged father who's a film director and he's back in town in Oslo because he wants to make a new film and he wants Nora to star in it she doesn't want to drama ensues Elle Fanning's involved yeah and there we go what's not to love we really loved having Renat on because I have to say there's sort of a staff fan group around Renata, the worst person in the world, which was also Joachim Trier.

1:56This is her third film with Joachim Trier. And she's really made her mark as an actress to watch. She's also such a fashion risk taker on the red carpet, which we love. She wears a lot of Louis Vuitton and Schiaparelli and clearly enjoys it and has a good time working with her stylist, Carla Welch, on it. So it's fun to watch Renata's rise. And she was wearing an amazing Louis Vuitton look when we spoke to her, which she talks about a bit at the top of the episode. She was very endearing at the beginning of our interview. She told us a bit about English words that she's been learning on her various U.S.

2:34press tours, including discombobulated, which is a feeling she shares a lot of the time. So we both had some time practicing Norwegian names as she was practicing discombobulated. But without further ado, here is Renata Reinsve.

2:54Before we even start, I need to hear about this outfit. Yeah, we need a credit. Well, I'm guessing the credit. I actually need it. I just opened the box where it was, and I found myself wanting marshmallows immediately. Yes. It's a marshmallow. It's Louis Vuitton. Potentially looks not comfortable. Well, it is actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's a collar of sorts with two Vuitton sort of Damier printed baubles on the end. How would you describe that line? Yeah, but they're also like cubist. Yeah. How did you put that on, actually? It's just like around here. Yeah. It's like you would wear ear. Totally.

3:36Like headphones. Headphones and then put them down. For sure. But they're very fabulous. Yeah, it does look like the chicest headphones. Like the chicest, like, DJ. For our listeners who are not watching, I want to describe that Renata's outfit, is it leather? Oh, wow. It's like suede. Yeah, is it? Yeah. Yeah, suede. A suede top with sort of princess sleeves and a leather skirt that is almost a bell shape. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like if, and this is the utmost compliment, if Glinda was a high-powered executive, this could be what she wears. So true. This would be great for the Alphas. Mm-hmm. It's a great description.

4:22Great description. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming in. It is Friday afternoon at Vogue, and Marley and I are in our Friday afternoon. Our Friday cuddles. Sweaters and sneakers. And we are not stepping up to Glinda in her corner office. You look fabulous. What else are you doing today that you, like, what's on sort of the weekend press tour? So today I actually have a little break after this, and that's not often these days. Okay, good. So what are you doing in your break? It's a gorgeous day. Yeah. I really wanted to go to see, like, some art. If you have any. Oh, have you gone to the new Frick?

4:58No, I haven't. Oh, my God. It's so beautiful. Okay, I'll go there. 70th and 5th. It just reopened a few months ago. Newly designed. It's so beautiful. It's so special. The Toolblocks collection. Marley entered in there as a youth. I spent a lot of time there in high school, so it's a very dear place in my heart. But it's just like such a special little slice of Manhattan. Okay, cool. Yeah. I'll go there. Amazing art, yeah. So we made the plan for that part of my day. And then I'm going to have a couple of screenings. Well, I'm not in the screenings, but I'll do the Q &As after. Okay. What do you usually do when you have to go to the before and after the screening?

5:35Like, is there a cast dinner? or are you just sort of scrolling on your phone? No, it's a dinner. And then maybe we invite some friends or someone we're distributing with or they're distributing our movie in that country we're in. It's sort of like Rachel Kemp when she invites Bjorn to Doveld. It's so meta. This whole experience is so meta. It feels like we're still in the movie. And also like the sister dynamic, me and Inga could never really get out of it. You have such good chemistry. It's so sweet. Did you meet on this movie? We had done like a children's play when we were younger. No way.

6:15And it was so like silly but really funny. No, it was like in our early 20s. So we were like. But it feels like we had something from before. Yeah. Something very silly. So it felt like something we would have as children so we could build off of that. That's so dear. Chemistry. Did Joakim know that? I don't think he did. You can correct my pronunciation. I'm trying really hard, but you can correct me. Is it Joachim? Joachim. It's good. Yeah, Joachim. Joachim. Yeah. Hold it. That's fine. But it's very, it's really hard for any other language to say it. But I say Joachim Phoenix. That's wrong, too, right?

6:52No, that's right. That's right. Is it? Yeah. That's why we're confused. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's true. That's why I think I'm saying it wrong, because I think I'm right. You just got here from LA, right? Yeah. It was extremely busy. Okay. Yeah. We just, because we all have families outside, so we're trying to make all the stuff we're doing in the shortest amount of time possible. Right. So we can go back to our, like, normal life. Yeah, I have a son. Okay. How old is he? Six. Oh. Yeah. My son, too. Really? Yeah. He's extremely naughty. So naughty. I'm just telling Marley, I have had a parent-teacher conference every week for the last month.

7:30Really? This morning, I was like, Arthur, do you know why we're meeting with Betty again? And he's like, because I don't listen. So at least you're aware. Well, self-aware. I think it's a good sign if you have like a little rascal. I think it's a good sign. He's going to be like a tech giant. How old was the young actor in the movie who plays Agnes' son? He's eight. He was so sweet. So sweet. And he was so present. And he was just like really just landing in the scene and being so, he wasn't aware of the camera at all he was just there yeah and then he was also like all over when we were not filming he was like crazy and like i'm tired i want all the chocolate and running around he was great just sort of saying what everyone else is thinking yeah that's true that's true i want that too did you did you film everything in oslo i did okay but i know that they uh stella and Elle, they went to Deauville.

8:31Okay. So she's going to Deauville. I wondered. It is really beautiful. So beautiful. But it wasn't as beautiful as it looks because it was really freezing and so much wind and everything was blowing around. And when she's in that strapless gold dress. I think they came home like, they looked discouraged. But they got back eventually, but they were like lagging from that trip. I think it was a hard part of the movie And we did some scenes in Sweden, especially with Stellan. Okay. When he's in his home and he has this great scene where he calls Nora, his daughter, drunk. Yeah. It's so, he does that so great.

9:11Was he actually drunk? No. And that's the amazing thing. That you would ask that is a great compliment. Exactly. Yeah. Does your son visit you on set or how do you sort of organize that life at home when you're shooting? Well, that's been like the best thing about this because I've kind of been so lucky that every production I've done, he's been able to come there and I've because I share him with my exo 5050. So I we actually they come to the city I'm in if I'm shooting somewhere and we get that same 5050. And then I try to be, of course, as much as home as possible so that he can go to his school and do his thing.

9:56with his friends. This was supposed to be my year off. Oh, wow. And then all of this great stuff happened and it's very hard to say no to. Yeah, of course. Sure. Does he understand your job? Because it's a hard job for kids. I mean, it's both a hard and the simplest job for kids to understand. Yeah, I was going to like ask you questions because you come from that. And like, how are you doing? This film was very... Right? Specific for me. Yeah. Well, when I was little, I spent a lot of time on the set of Murphy Brown. And I just thought that that's sort of what most people did. But in the same way that everyone thinks their childhood is normal.

10:39I mean, my mom and my father lived in separate countries, but were together. And I just assumed that's what everyone's parents did. So you had the expectations kind of together with the experience. But it is a very confusing and also relatable thing for a child to see someone whose job is to pretend. Yeah. Because so much of their world is pretend. Right. Yeah. We do it since we're kids in that, like, the acting. I just never stop doing it because you kind of do that. You try to understand the situation or, like, a social structure you're in through, like, playing it out. Yeah. And that's also how I got into it, like, when I was nine.

11:17like really enjoying that and that was kind of my force in and it still is but my son has been like I think discovering that this is a bit unusual and it's been so many like posters Oslo is really small so you really see the posters everywhere they were having screenings of this movie sentimental value and worst person to have like the both of them too so you could see both and that was weird and he was starting to get a bit anxious I don't know if it was a good idea but I took him to the Norwegian premiere and I didn't talk to anyone else than him. So he would know that he was the most important.

11:54And then he kind of actually stopped being anxious. So maybe I fucked him up even more. Or maybe it was okay. It's hard to know what to do. Because you're probably like, why is mom everywhere and all this attention on mom? What does this mean? What does it mean to me? Well, I think that's smart because my mom never took me to anything. Right. Like event wise. but it made me feel excluded. Right. Right. Which in retrospect, I think that was, I understand why she did that and that was fine. She just didn't want there to be photos of me or whatever. But at the time it was like, oh, but everyone's talking about this thing.

12:30Yeah. Then I have, I'm not a part of it. Right. Yeah. And like everyone comes up on the street being like, congratulations when we just got like an entry to go into, like from Norway, like the Oscar entry from Norway. and then everyone would come up because it's yeah it's Norway is really yeah yeah yeah and so that he would just like scream when like one more person and one more person and one more person and of course it's nice for me to hear but but also like finding the balance between like giving them attention and not being rude and saying I'm yeah I'm with this little boy thank you so much Yeah.

13:08So it's something to always like be aware of and try to like protect him in all of this because it's like. It's a lot. Yeah. I was going to ask about the experience of shooting in Oslo because, I mean, Joachim has made what's now known as the Oslo trilogy. It's reprise, also August 31st and worst person in the world. Yes. And this is also set for the most part in Oslo. So what's it like shooting there? I find that he captures it in such a beautiful and evocative way. I've never been, but I would love to go, just kind of based on the way that he sort of photographs it. I think you like Scandinavia.

13:47I agree with you. I have been to Stockholm. It was in winter. I was like, maybe this was like not the greatest time to be there. It was like the sun was setting at 4 p.m. But anyway. It's not a good time. It was not a good time. Don't go. I'm curious about like, yeah, the experience of shooting there. What do you think makes the city like come alive on screen? I think it's the light. It's a lot about the light. It's very special. And in the summer, you don't get a sunset or the sun is just up all the time. And you have all these special times where the lighting is really beautiful. And I think because the winter is so long and it's dark, like eight months of the year, when the sun comes back, it's like a festival.

14:28It's gorgeous. Yeah. It's amazing for like everything just happens in the streets. and you can go out not knowing what to do and you'll meet someone and then you'll just end up partying the whole night. Yeah. That's kind of the vibe of getting a forced person in the world, I guess. Kind of like that all night, kind of like just going from place to place, just like an endless sort of like. Yeah, that's very, it feels very accurate for what a summer is like in Oslo. Totally. Yeah.

14:56The Run-Through will be back in a moment.

15:02Thank you.

15:32wherever you listen to podcasts.

15:39I also loved the sort of gingerbread Victorian house that is so the nucleus of the film. Yeah, those amazing windows. Beautiful windows. And I wonder, I mean, it's a multi-generational family home, and there's obviously, as people will see the film, a lot of plot points that took place in the house. Do you have a house that felt like that for you growing up, like a family home, your grandparents or something or someplace now that was more than a house? It really sort of housed history of a family. Well, my family moved around a lot and it would always change up because my mom and dad split up and then they would have new relationships and they would split up.

16:22So it was always a lot of people moving around. But I did have, I didn't like go to like, you say preschool, right? Or like kindergarten. Yeah. So I didn't go to that. But there was this woman taking care of a few kids. And she kind of always stayed the same and the same base and the same kids were there. And I had like my best friend there. And he was my best friend until I was like, in my mid 20s. And we still keep in contact. But we like have such different lives now. But that was my base. And that's where I actually have like the most memories from that house. I was there throughout all of primary school, actually, after class.

17:04I went there. And she was like my, she was very important to me. Wow. She was called Dalda. Shout out to Dalda. The house that you filmed was actually in Joaquim's neighborhood that he just discovered on a walk. Yeah. Yeah. Was, did someone actually live there? Were you there for a long time in this person's home? We did. It was a family home and we were shown pictures from all times. So we kind of had that feeling of that, what this had meant and how much time had passed in that house and how much, I guess, drama in the little things that had happened just by time passing in all the big events and small events that had like made lives through generations in that house.

17:45and the yeah the family was very generous to give us the house for a few months and Joachim has said also he invited them because they built a studio version right also to do some of the scenes that when they couldn't like make it back and forth 60s to the 2000s really quickly so they had to have a studio and they took the family to see how the house looked exactly the same as it was in the 60s. And that was very emotional for that family. Wow, interesting. That's interesting. It's a lot of meta. It's like so, it was so integrated in our lives, both like what happened there and what had happened in our lives.

18:27And it's a very personal movie for all of us involved in the movie. Toward the end of the movie, like the final scene where let's say something is being filmed, was that the real soundstage? Do you know what I'm talking about? Was that the real soundstage of the house? Yeah, that was the studio. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. Yeah, very cool. Layers upon layers. Peeling the onion. We love it. We love it. But like in the film where Stellan Skarsgård's character, who is a great director who hasn't made a film in two decades, he writes a film with his daughter, Nora, who you play in mind, and she does not want to play that role.

19:12Joaquim, he wrote this role as well as The Worst Person in the World with you in mind. Are you part of that idea generation? Do you give input into any of the lines? Do you ad-lib any of it? I think because Joaquim and Eskil, they go into the writing room, and that's kind of their little room where no one else is let in, although we would love to. and they watch movies and they talk about all these themes and they kind of slowly it builds in there but because they write for someone they i think you are can did that on a different kind of base on worst person in the world he had seen me in some things and we knew each other a little bit and i've had this one line but he knew that i i had kind of some levity that he was looking for for a character and and also had seen me do a lot of like heavy dramatic things on stage so he wanted that combination in a character and then he wrote it picturing me so that will inform that character and then when we got to rehearsals he will adapt the script and the scenes to what comes out of that dynamic between the actors in the rehearsal and the the person portraying that character and in this sentimental value he did that but it's it was even deeper because now we kind of know each other so well we know that we can express something through each other he knows where i can go and want to go with a character so he wanted to write a more mature role with a more emotional depth and weight we knew where were we going with it and then it Also, we get to rehearsal and then he adapts the scripts from those rehearsals.

21:04And then on set, it's also very flexible, very open. We know the ideal version of a scene and we go in with that, but it's very open so that whatever comes out that's authentic will stay in the movie. I mean, I did want to ask about one scene that I found so moving as an older sister. the scene between Nora and Agnes where they're kind of like recontextualizing their relationship. Nora kind of has, it seems like one idea of what Agnes' sort of relationship to, I guess, their father has been. I think she does ask, and this is in the trailer, like, how are you not like messed up by our childhood?

21:42And Agnes is kind of, ultimately, I think, communicates that like, she has damage too, that maybe it's not as sort of obvious as Nora. Were you like surprised by any of the emotions that kind of came out? during that scene in particular. I was, but we've been kind of conditioned or to let anything happen. And he will never, like he writes his character, he doesn't judge anyone. Like all the chaos within a person is written with so much compassion and care. And the same, like the way we show up in a scene, it's more raw and more kind of, you get something that is authentic. You might not get exactly what you want, but then you get an actual moment he calls them events like he's changed chasing events so we kind of at that point doing that scene we've been doing a lot of scenes and and it's kind of that structure where you get into a place where you know where the ideal version of the scene is but you're totally open if that don't happen it's it's still good because you stay true to your character and now it sounds like it's completely open but it's still like craft it's a lot of craft behind that moment but to be able to get to that point where everything is open is it's how you kind of conditions everyone cast and crew so when inga had this um impulse to get up on bed and hug yeah uh my character when they both realize that they've been there for each other and And Nora realizes that she's actually been able to take care of someone even though she doesn't see her own ability.

23:25That's a huge realization. And then the actor, Inga, wanted to get up on bed, but she was a little scared to ruin the scene. So, and Joakim, he's right next to the camera. And he is so tuned in. He knows exactly what's going on inside of us. It's like, it's fantastic. He seems very emotionally intelligent. Very. He is so emotionally intelligent. And it's such, you never feel you're alone. Because the whole crew, everyone is so emotionally leaned in because he encourages it. So he whispered, do it. Climb up a bed. And then she did. And then she had the bravery to add a line saying, I love you. Because she felt it.

24:09But Joakim and Eskil, they've talked about it. They can never write that line. It's too pompous. Yeah, it's too much. And then the DP, Casper Tuxen, he jumps up on bed and he gets that shot. But he wouldn't have if he wasn't in the same space. And he was like telling his very personal story too in the movie. Like it doesn't matter what that is, but he was very, the movie was also personal to him. So he just loved those sisters and really wanted that story for. Yeah, he's just an amazing DP. Oh, my God. Yeah, and then I was in character trying to say back to, or Nora was trying to say back to her sister that she loves her, but she struggles to say it.

24:55So it was just all, it just all came together as an improvisation, but not only between Mininga, but the whole room. Yeah. Wow. That's so cool. It's very cool. I was very, I thought that the opening of the film in backstage of the theater had such exciting dynamism to it. And you sort of see Nora's character going behind the rafters and she starts to have a panic attack in this sort of corseted period costume. Have you, you've obviously done quite a bit of stage work. Have you ever had a similar moment backstage where you've been like, oh my God, I can't go out there. I haven't actually. That's good.

25:31I feel I can like facilitate my fear. Okay. In a good way. Like channel it into like. Yeah. But I've seen that exact thing happening. Oh, wow. So I was, and I, of course, it's horrible to see. And I'm smiling because it is some fun in people panicking because it's so true. And I can recognize panic even though I kind of not, I don't act out of it. Yeah. In some situations I probably do, but not on stage. Yeah. But what I really loved about that scene is that you can see how much she's carrying inside. And to get up on stage and do a good performance, you have to access all of that. And she just like, she doesn't know, but she flips out going into that and physically runs away and rips off her dress.

26:19It was fantastic. We must be taped back together. It's so amazing. So funny. And then you see that that force of what she's carrying that she's not able to process or communicate is what also gives her all her talent. Totally. Yeah, you get the sense, like, she has to be that kind of, like, wired and kind of wild to be as powerful a performer as she is. And I really like that, like, launch of a character in the beginning of a movie. You kind of see all of what she's struggling with. What, well, I like there's a moment between you and your lover, the character, and her lover. Anders. We love Anders.

26:54Yeah. We love Anders. He is so great. ADL.