Classic International Movie: “Reprise”
October is classic international movies month. Today’s guest post comes from Wally Marzano-Lesnevich.
Movie Title: Reprise
Year: 2006
Writers: Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt
Lead Actors: Anders Danielsen Lie, Espen Klouman Hoiner, Viktoria Winge, Sigmund Saeverud
Director: Joachim Trier
IMDb Plot Summary: Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers.
Rotten Tomatoes Plot Summary: Erik and Phillip are trying to make it as writers. Erik is rejected by publishers as lacking in talent, while Phillip’s manuscript is accepted and the young man becomes a major name on the Norwegian cultural scene practically overnight. Six months later, Erik and his friends come to visit Phillip at a psychiatric hospital to bring him home after long-term treatment. Writing is the last thing on Phillip’s mind, but Erik is continuing his literary attempts and tries to convince his friend to go back to writing.
Why I Think This Is A Classic International Movie
Reprise is, on its surface, stubbornly low-concept: it’s about friendship and ensuing literary ambitions between two friends; it’s about an obsessive romance, and killing time with your buddies, and youthful passions.
Like any universal story that speaks timeless truths, however, it’s in the telling: the brazenly audacious way this particular story is told. It’s a classic international film not simply because all of the tropes of indie cinema are here — and they are all gloriously here, what with writing, obsession, love, loss, drugs, sex, suicide attempts, punk music, Paris, and more! — but because of the usage of time: scenes cut back-and-forth, hopscotching through memory and time in a way that would make even Tennessee Williams dizzy.
I first saw Reprise when it was released theatrically in the States in 2006, at the Laemmle Santa Monica, and several nights later I dragged three friends with me for Indian food and, for me, a repeat viewing. (It’s that startling of a film, that it demands and repays a repeat viewing immediately.) Watching it 10 years later, on the opposite coast and with the benefit of time, it once again astounds with its visual marvels. It is, above all, about youth: the wild abandon of youth, but also the reckless arrogance of youth. At times Reprise feels like a foreign, more serious Swingers — or the archetypal foreign film about young men’s friendship, Fellini’s I Vitelloni.
The theme of Reprise is that youthful time in life when — as the film says — you spend “… all your money on books and records.” It’s writing and work and friends and drinking and girls and more writing. The dual protagonists’ ambitions to write are epitomized by their favorite author, a recluse named Sten Egil Dahl (supposedly based upon the author Tor Ulven, but, as an American, impossible not to read as J.D. Salinger). One of them is fueled by their ambition; the other, almost destroyed by it. In-between there is love, loss, travel — in between their creative responsibilities is life. (For that reason alone I cannot recommend it more highly to the reader of this blog — it’s all too relatable.)
It also jumps into the future, near the end. I won’t give anything away, but it’s all there: how inevitably this time in life does not last — nor would you want it to.
My Favorite Moment(s) In The Movie
There’s a section early in the movie that kicks off with a vinyl being slipped onto a turntable, and the narrator’s voice speaking this subtitle: “The punk band Kommune played their farewell concert on December 27, 1999.” It’s a moment that spins out of a day at the beach, and shows how our main four lades became friends, and how youthful connections ebb and flow as adult life intrudes (it also feature the amazing and fake punk song ‘Finger-Fucked by The Prime Minister,’ which receives a callback). It concludes with Phillip and his mates back at the beach and Phillip, in his mind, relives happier moments with his friends there, in a heartbreakingly beautiful scene.
Later at the same beach a woman from one of the main character’s publisher’s office rips all the lads a new one, and it’s also an amazing scene: it takes you immediately back to that time in life when anyone outside your social circle was an interloper. Of course, the great truth about the woman’s tirade is she’s 100% right: there’s something about the immaturity of youth that can only be appreciated in that moment.
My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie
“We can’t have girlfriends now. We’re supposed to write and read and hang out with friends. And if we feel the urge we’ll practice deviant, fetishistic sex with prostitutes.”
Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie
How the film plays with time and memory — taking scenes that range from a possible break-up, a night out with friends, being scolded by your mother, and a flashback to second grade — and mixing them all up in a rich stew of moments.
The tendency the film has to pause right before a moment, and the narrator’s voice will tell you what may happen — and then something different happens. The film itself — by constantly going off on tangents about characters and moments — suggests the wild possibilities of youth.
Frankly, everything. This is a packed film, with style to burn, that speaks to the ethos of youth: excess, in ambition, style, work, friendship, love, sex.
The movie’s website.
Thanks, Wally!
To show our gratitude for your guest post, here’s a dash of creative juju for you. Whoosh!
Twitter: @wallyml
We already have a set of classic 30s movies, 40s movies, 5os movies, 60s Movies, 70s movies, 80s Movies and 90s Movies. This month, we’re working on classic international movies. And thanks to the GITS community, we’ve got at least 22 movies in the works and hopefully more!
Those who I put in bold have already sent me their posts. If you haven’t sent yours to me, please do so as soon as you can!!!
A Prophet — Paul Graunke
Akira — RealThndrMonkey
Amelie — Kevin Curran
Belle Epoque — Melinda Mahaffey
Cinema Paradiso — Traci Nell Peterson
Diabolique — Sherin Nicole
Jules et Jim — Susan Winchell
Kolya — Melinda Mahaffey
Millennium Actress — Chris Neumann
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies — John Henderson
Reprise — Wally Marzano-Lesnevich
Seven Samurai — Will King
The Lives of Others — PaulG
The Tenant — Marija Nielsen
This Man Must Die — Marija Nielsen
Looking for more volunteers, your chance to memorialize your favorite international movie and yourself as a contributor to our ongoing blog series on classic movies.