Novel Twists

by Sam Adams

review

Recommended

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Narrated in the conditional tense, Joachim Trier's Reprise is a chronicle of what might have been. At the same moment, young Norwegian novelists Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) drop their manuscripts in the mailbox, and from then on the movie is a series of what-ifs, or perhaps more precisely if-onlys, since the hypothetical scenarios rarely turn out for the best.

In the first version, related as a series of still pictures, both novels "would have been" accepted, but Philip is destroyed by his success, while Erik thrives on it, even guiltily profiting from his friend's misfortune. But the thread the movie chooses to pick up is one where Philip's novel is published, and Erik's is rejected, with success and failure each posing its own hazards to them and their friendship.

Reprise does plenty of trendy time-hopping, but it's not just because Trier got itchy fingers in the editing suite. Although the movie's characters are young, the voiceover suggests a narrator looking back from a great distance, wondering if, or how, thingscould have gone differently. The movie's obsession with alternate outcomes mirrors its protagonists' preoccupation with professional glory. Every failure is the occasion for ruing some potential past misstep, and even success is mismanaged and dangerous.

From the movie's opening frames, the specter of Joy Division, and particularly its doomed singer Ian Curtis, hangs over Reprise. Philip's piercing gaze, and his penchant for self-destruction, mirror Curtis' own, but the specter of failure, a friend who ditched a job for his girlfriend, then lost her, too, also wears a Joy Division tee. Trier's characters never discuss the band — they're more interested in Norwegian hardcore — but the insistent references form a subliminal refrain.

Apart from themselves, Philip and Erik's other mutual obsession is a reclusive novelist who published young and then vanished. He might be their future, or they his past. Too restless to settle on any one possibility, Trier can end the movie only by yelling, "Stop!" There's no way to slow down, only a crashing halt and the broken pieces that remain.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)

Reprise

Directed by Joachim Trier

A Miramax release