Oslo, August 31st

‘Every junkie’s like the setting sun,’ sang Neil Young, and this deeply affecting, quiet and restrained Norwegian film is a compassionate, cutting portrait of a day in the life of a man whose light is slowly going out. Anders (Anders Danielsen) is a thirtysomething, fresh out of rehab, who arrives in Oslo for a job interview and to catch up with old friends. Over the opening credits, we hear anonymous voices recalling growing up in Oslo, which hint too at the film’s carefully-handled theme of being disconnected from places and people in your past, sometimes tragically so. Several encounters, filmed delicately and intimately by writer-director Joachim Trier (‘Reprise’), investigate this idea further as Anders fluffs the interview, spends time with an old pal who is now a husband and father, and goes to a party at the apartment of one of his successful contemporaries. Trier has adapted a 1930s French novel, which in 1963 Louis Malle filmed as ‘Le Feu Follet’, but this feels totally fresh and modern in its concerns. It’s also devastating.