To Bathe in Filmic Waters

Reprise | Joachim Trier, 2006

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word Reprise as ‘a recurrence, renewal, or resumption of an action’ and it was armed with this phrase that I took to fledgling Danish filmmaker Joachim Trier’s first feature film recently. Reprise, the festival hit that so impressed The New York Times last year, is still oddly unheard of in my own rather elliptical film circle and I’m not quite sure why. It is a film very much concerned with the youth of today and with those things that the literary side of youth consider as important above all: books, fame and love – often in that order. Reprise centres around a pair of budding twenty-something writers named Erik and Phillip who seek to throw off their grey, imposing, cityscape surroundings  by finally getting their work published. The film begins with expectancy in front of an Oslo Post Box; letters drop, breaths are held, dreams of the future unfold, change, and then just as quickly dissipate as we’re brought crashing back to the present day. It’s an eye-opening early sequence that both defines and hinders Reprise; existing as an unstable foundation upon which the dual tale of our two protagonists is subsequently built but also a framing device that serves to give some structure to the film and allow it the chance of a clean conclusion. The strength of Reprise however lies in its aesthetic; not in its loud and often rashly edited sequences such as this one, but more in the stirring use of photography that, at its naturalistic best, manages to confidently capture both the warmth and coldness of a city’s youth.

As a premise Reprise can be found to skirt the boundaries of cliché with a certain tenacious confidence; it knows that the idea of young, hip, exuberant characters finding fame and love is not the most novel premise yet still manages to produce something real and at the same time emotionally aware. This allows the director to throw in one or two glaring plot contrivances without the fear that they will be perceived as forced or shallow. It is ultimately this confidence as a director that ensures everything holds together and its very much an assured debut from  Joachim Trier. This confidence despite a lack of experience can also be compared to the actors Trier casts. Both Espen Klouman-Høiner and Anders Danielsen Lie – who play Erik and Phillip respectively – went into the project with little-to-no acting background yet, in their ability to shift the very tone of a scene with a mere change of expression, seem to evoke characters from earlier French and Italian films. Reprise does stumble slightly thanks to a narrative structure that becomes increasingly distracted as the film wears on; concerning itself with important subjects such as psychopathy and depression yet never addressing either in a particularly decisive or clinical manner. These tangents are however critical in ensuring that the film doesn’t become a linear affair and if there’s one thing that Reprise isn’t, it’s linear. While its title may mean any number of things in relation to its content, Reprise is certainly a rewarding experience and should be duly noted as the early, grass-green shoots of one of European Cinema’s emerging talents.

Our Rating: