Give her an Oscar: Renate Reinsve and Hollywood’s enduring one-inch barrier
Crying during Sentimental Value is strange; by the end of Joachim Trier’s latest picture, it doesn’t so much feel like you’re crying at the movie, it feels like you’re crying with it, and almost all of that comes down to Norway‘s Renate Reinsve.
It always feels special when a director finds their people, for it so often leads to their best works, like Wes Anderson and Bill Murray, Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone. When a director finds a star who slots into their cinematic world perfect, just gets it and accurately captures it, magic can happen onscreen.
Reinsve is undeniably that for Trier; since making her film debut with one line in Oslo, August 31st, it feels like not only does she perfect fit his vision, but by now, she is his vision.
Ahead of The Worst Person In The World, Reinsve admitted that she was about ready to quit acting, feeling like she was getting nowhere and getting nowhere in an industry she was doubting more and more. “I feel that it’s not given enough space for the art of it, the existential conversations, and that’s why I wanted to act in the first place,” she told W, “I wanted to quit, and then the day after, Joachim called me for this role.” Trier wrote the role of Julie for her, with her in mind after seeing her in her debut tiny extra role, knowing only she could carry it off and knowing it would be the ultimate vehicle for her talent.
When it came out, Reinsve won ‘Best Actress’ at the Cannes film festival; Trier’s belief in her talent was rightful, and she was a sensation, such that the lack of Oscar buzz for the performance was completely baffling.
In Sentimental Value, once again, it’s clear that Reinsve’s role of Nora is made for her, but in this case, there is the added element of nuanced truth in there as parts of Reinsve’s own experiences as an actor, and Trier and her’s experiences as Norwegian creatives floating in, adding an element of industry critique into the deeply and intensely moving family drama.
But really, any kind of discourse when it comes to the script is besides the point, as what we have at play here is further proof of the incredible talent Trier backed and now seems to revolve around. It plays out in the movie itself: while Elle Fanning’s character of Rachel Kemp is initially booked for a role, Nora was always destined to play it better, able to bring subtly and wordlessness; Nora and Reinsve can act in a glint in the eye, in the almost invisible move of an eyebrow, in a breath. The power lies in the huge weight of tiny things, and as Reinsve delivered a lofty role-within-a-role performance, it must have demanded so much, but she plays it with such ease.
Reinsve is a star; she was a star in her debut, she was a star in her Cannes winning performance, she was a star in the criminally underrated A Different Man and then never has she been more of a star than right her in this complete tour de force role that was once again made for her and that once again she knocks out of the park. She is up there with, and arguably bettering, her peers, so why does it feel so unlikely that she’ll take home an Oscar here?
“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Bong Joon-ho said at the Oscars in 2020 when his movie Parasite became the first-ever non-English speaking film to win ‘Best Picture‘. Since some might argue there’s been progress with a few more films nominated, like 2024’s I’m Still Here or 2021’s Drive My Car, but what still seems held back by that one-inch-tall barrier is the breaking through of non-English speaking stars into the leagues of the Britons or the Americans.
In Sentimental Value, there is a discussion held about whether Elle Fanning’s character would be able to play her role right, if she’s speaking English. Would the story ever be carried properly or authentically when translated and placed into the mouth of someone foreign to its origin? In that consideration, Trier seemed to be making a point. It’s in defence of foreign films and his decision to stick true to Norwegian movies, in Norwegian and led by predominantly Norwegian actors, but he’s also playing out a point with Fanning’s Rachel Kemp, the star who can bring a big budget and buzz, but Reinsve’s Nora is the one who can make it great. The truth, that the view and Trier and Reinsve all know, is that realistically, without Kemp, the movie they’re making wouldn’t get as much buzz as its mother tongue would still limit it.
Does it all still come down to one inch? Reinsve is every inch the leading lady, the star, the modern great who is undeniably destined for future greatness and to be revered for the greatness she’s already delivered. She deserves Oscar buzz just as she’s deserved it before, but for how long is one inch still a fence too high for a foreign star to be truly and properly recognised in the big leagues?
