Reprise

A bright, thoughtful, confidently directed and showcase-y debut with acceptably pretentious nouvelle vague-style nods to literary and cinematic precursors  from young Norwegian director-co-writer Trier. This being Volvo-land, the protagonists are, of course, middle-class; split between the privileged Oslo west-siders – notably our two aspirant novelist ‘heroes’, successful Erik (Kloumen-Høiner) and his neurotic buddy Philip (Danielsen Lie) – and the ‘underestimated bourgeois retards’ of the east. It’s a by-turns flip and searching rites-of-passage drama that deals entertainingly with the rivalries, doubts, fears and sexual entanglements of its contrasted pair and the wider wentysomething milieu, made with an entertaining, ‘lets-try-it’ new wave shooting style, jigsaw-construction and sure feel for mise-en-scéne.