European Films

Two-time Norwegian skateboard champion Joachim Trier (indeed a distant relative of Lars von Trier) make an auspicious feature debut with Reprise, which is part of the Competition line-up here at Karlovy Vary and will unlikely leave the festival empty-handed (the film won two awards, including Best Director, BvH). Reprise could be dubbed a Jules et Jim for the current twenty-something generation, and the film even detours to Paris several times to underline the point (not to mention that the title is a giveaway). Interestingly, it similarities are not so much in the story (though it does involve two artistic friends and a girl), but in its ability to seamlessly synthesise the heedless energy of youth and its pronounced melancholy undercurrents. 

The film opens with a black and white “what-if” sequence in which the 23-year-old friends Erik (Espen Kloumann Høiner, a Norwegian August Diehl) and Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie, a local variation on Garden State's Zach Braff) post their respective novel manuscripts simultaneously, in the hope a publisher will find them good enough to print. In a visually witty manner several outcomes are proposed before the main story unfolds, which involves initial success for Philip but not for Erik. Erik’s euphoria is short-lived however, when his obsessive romance with Kari (Victoria Winge, a major discovery) “triggers his psychosis” and he ends up in the hospital.

Both Philip and Erik are great admirers of lauded Norwegian novelist Sten Egil Dahl, who fled abroad after his first success as a young novelist and now, in old age, lives as a recluse in Oslo, only venturing outside to walk his dog. Dahl’s fate can be seen as a foreshadowing of what a career in writing might do to the two young talents, who have a large circle of friends and lovers now but whose need to create might get in the way of a normal lifestyle. 

Exactly one year after their first romantic get-together, Philip and Kari are in Paris again, and Philip painstakingly tries to recreate what happened spontaneously the first time around, hoping it will inspire his creativity in what plays like a real-life application of Wordsworth’s famous description of poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. The scene speaks volumes about Philip's state of mind and his dire need to deal with his urge to create. Just like Truffaut's classic, however, the exact subject matter of the film will probably only come into focus after multiple viewings. What is clear straight away is that Reprise announces Trier as a major new name on the European scene with this film, which warrants multiple viewings to understand and fully absorb all it has to say.

Boyd van Hoeij named Reprise as one of the ten Best Films of 2006.