LIKE many a Scandinavian film before it, Norway’s “Reprise” is a tale of lust: a naked, urgent, wanton craving for literature.
Erik and Phillip, two friends in their early 20s, are determined to commit fiction, dreaming of becoming cult authors who are denounced by the Vatican. Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) is an immediate success and pays dearly for it, while Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) wins the prize of rejection.
An American movie would have exactingly charted each’s professional course, but this film by Joachim Trier, which won the best picture prize in its home country, isn’t really interested in which friend hits the best-seller list. We’re talking about the nanostakes of the Norwegian book business.
It’s the internal effects – symptoms? – of writing that concern Trier, the dreaminess and isolation and freaking out. About halfway through, you start to suspect that the film has no particular destination. Instead, it’s content to cast oblique glances at fleeting impressions and hang around with a group of friends that includes “Porno Lars,” a guy who says women aren’t worth having adult conversations with, perhaps because he’s afraid to talk to them.
Important events – such as a suicide attempt – are skipped over, while Erik’s girlfriend, whom he vows to dump if he ever gets published, seems to exist primarily off-screen. Phillip, though, has a touching affair with Kari (Viktoria Winge), who shares his taste for Ramones vinyl. “His gaze made her feel pretty,” intones the narrator, in a voice of bruised longing reminiscent of French New Wave films like “Jules and Jim.”
The film could have been improved if it had been less aggressively limp. But the post-adolescent, pre-adult moodiness is spot on: Everyone’s favorite author is a bitter recluse, and the soundtrack heaves with the suicide sounds of Joy Division. Trier’s intent is to reproduce a sweet, hazy vision of the agony of youth. Ever so elliptically, he succeeds.
REPRISE
Youth and other tragedies.
In Norwegian with English subtitles. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (sex, nudity, profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Sunshine.