Movie Review: Reprise
By Michael Phillips, Tribune Movie Critic
In our early 20s we make and remake ourselves, revising as we go, chasing our futures without a compass. So many films try to capture that headlong rush of possibility. So many filmmakers try to bottle that feeling. So few pull it off.
This one does. A kinetic delight, "Reprise" comes from director Joachim Trier, born in Denmark but raised in Oslo, Norway, and it's a highlight of the filmgoing year so far.
Trier fills the screen with the story of two friends and literary rivals. The results are dramatic, dryly comic, a blur of tonalities, but a supremely confident one. It opens with a bang. Phillip, played by Anders Danielsen Lie, and Erik, played by Espen Klouman Hoiner, stand by a mailbox, each holding an envelope containing a manuscript. They're about to send off their respective cult masterworks to a publisher.
In a dazzling speculative montage, director Trier (who co-wrote "Reprise" with Eskil Vogt) imagines what each young man's life will be like if things go according to their wildest dreams of literary glory. The rest of the film doesn't so much rain on those dreams as bring them down to earth, as Phillip and Erik find themselves in a constant state of revision, sorting out romantic love, ambition, envy and a complicated friendship.
If you saw Tom Tykwer's "Run Lola Run," the detour-laden, smash-and-grab techniques will be somewhat familiar. "Reprise" is just plain fun to watch. But the style isn't out to kill you every minute. Trier takes a few notions from the Dogma group of filmmakers, with their stripped-down anti-romantic romanticism, and a few from mainstream filmmaking. The result reflects a knowing look back. Trier and company dredge up their own feelings about young adulthood and its dislocations and regrets, not so many years ago. (Trier is in his 30s.)
The film doesn't make the usual play for our sympathies, even when one character suffers a nervous breakdown. As his characters prowl the parties, nightclubs and streets of Oslo, their sheer velocity pulls you along. Viktoria Winge plays Kari, the woman in Phillip's life, who becomes for him a symbol of a past he can't recapture.
There's a moment when Phillip, appearing on a literary talk show after his book is published, finds himself nervously making "air quotes" once too often. Trier, who is a distant cousin of the Danish director Lars Von Trier, quickly cuts to his friends watching the show in another part of town, and one of them mimics the same air-quote gesture. You know Phillip will never live it down. It's just one of many details that keep this restless, intoxicating picture percolating.
MPAA rating: R (for sexuality and language).
Running time: 1:50
Opening: Friday at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema.
Starring: Espen Klouman Hoiner (Erik); Anders Danielsen Lie (Phillip); Viktoria Winge (Kari); Christian Rubeck (Lars).
Directed by Joachim Trier; written by Trier and Eskil Vogt; photographed by Jakob Ihre; edited by Olivier Bugge Paalgaard; music by Ola Flottum; production design by Roger Rosenberg; produced by Karin Julsrud. A Miramax Films and Red Envelope Entertainment release.
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