Reprise
Reprise is a fresh take on friendship, love, ideals and adversity in a group of young people in contemporary Norway. Director Joachim Trier focuses principally on two young men. They retain some of the mentality that served them in younger years: the objectification of women, females as “others” (ie, not part of their group), the eschewal of so-called bourgeois trappings such as marriage and corporate life.
Nevertheless, the men in this group, on an individual level, yearn for the emotional intimacy a relationship with a woman can provide. It is interesting watching them try to conceal this fact from each other: pretending that their girlfriends don’t mean as much to them as they actually do, and conducting phone calls to them away from the censorial ears of their peers.
Eric and Philip, harbour aspirations to become writers. Not just any writers, mind you. They wish to emulate the precocious success of their literary hero Sten Egil Dahl (a play on the name of French author Stendahl?). Dahl won critical acclaim with his early works, but then retreated inexplicably into a reclusive life. By doing so, he attained a mystique of heroic proportions for Eric and Philip, who strive to, one day, have their own symbolically oblique works published. Indeed, at the start of the film, we see them mailing off their manuscripts. Who will get published, and will it herald success?
A rather long stay in hospital after a psychotic episode for one of the duo suggests not. This setback will test their mettle, and the true nature of their relationship. It is a story that is happening every day around the world: the relationships of boyhood friends who, facing the complex world of adulthood, will need to reassess who their friends are, and why. Not all the things we cherish in childhood can survive the journey into adulthood. As these men will discover, this is true of relationships and ideals.
The main cast members are very good. Anders Danielsen Lie is particularly good as the young, troubled writer. Espen Klouman-Høin’s portray’s Erik’s cocksure arrogance well.
Slowly, we see the young men succumbing to reality. To be published, they must dally with the corporate world, and publicity junkets.
A scene in which the group of friends turn up unexpectedly at the house of one of their friends is telling: they peer through the window and see that their friend is busy with a dinner party. They profess to be appalled. They certainly look disappointed, but are they disappointed for their friend, or for themselves; for what the friend has succumbed to, or what they lack?
Erik deciding where in his bookshelf to place his newly published book is priceless: his cocksure vanity will be short-lived, when tested by the realities of the big world that exists outside his egocentric mind space.
The film’s best moments are the quiet ones. These are, after all, the times during which the characters go through their deepest emotional experiences.
Trier has made a film about young adulthood that, unlike other films featuring that age group, won’t alienate older audiences.