Interview: Joachim Trier’s Debut Explores Young Angst With Exceptional Feeling in ‘Reprise’

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CHICAGO – When combined with the responsibilities of making the rent or making your way in the relationship landscape, early adulthood is often more challenging (and in different ways) than adolescence.

Writer and director Joachim Trier’s new Norwegian film “Reprise” explores the lives of two writers in their early 20s – through sanity and insanity – addled with feelings of love so bad it can hurt. HollywoodChicago recently interviewed the filmmaker and learned that his reflections match the philosophical objectives of his passionate and unique film.

Anders Danielsen Lie (left) as Phillip and Viktoria Winge as Kari in “Reprise”. Photo credit: Nils Vik and Miramax Films

“There is a wonderful energy to that time of life,” Trier told HollywoodChicago.com. “I found that in my own life there was an enthusiasm and fascination to discovers things. At the same time, what I couldn’t return to was the naiveté regarding the romantic notions of love and the future.”

“Reprise” director Joachim Trier. Photo credit: Nils Vik and Miramax Films

He continued: “These are the notions the characters in the film have to part with. That is really what that stage of life is about in ‘Reprise’. It is certainly different for everyone, but in this film, we found that characters around 23 years old are a great time period of change in people’s lives to portray.”

Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) are best friends and writing buddies. In the beginning of the narrative, they are both poised by the mailbox with thick manuscripts that are about to be sent to a publisher. The narration then imagines a scenario of what happens next.

They both are successful and they both move forward to a second novel in far-off lands. What actually happens is more complicated and testing.

“I always felt that ‘Reprise’ was a film about friendship [rather] than actual writing,” Trier related. “It is more about the dynamics of a shared passion, and in this case, they want to be writers. It is more about their aspirations and ambitions and how that correlates with friendship and growing up and creating an identity. That’s what I was more curious about.”

It is Phillip’s novel that gets published. The subsequent attention takes a toll on both his psyche and friendships.

Anders Danielsen Lie as Phillip (left) and Viktoria Winge as Kari in “Reprise”. Photo credit: Nils Vik and Miramax Films

He’s also amid a first love. It’s an intense relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge). When Kari drifts away and the pressure of early fame beats down upon him, he suffers a nervous breakdown that requires institutionalization. His friends (especially Erik) are called upon to rally around him.

“What we did not want to do is romanticize mental illness,” Trier said. “We were interested in it as a metaphor. We wanted all the details to be right. We were very much interested in being close to that person who goes beyond.”

Trier uses flashback and fantasy sequences to develop character. In the early development of Phillip and Erik as writers, they are obsessed with a reclusive character (a J.D. Salinger-type Norwegian writer named Sten Egil Dahl). Trier based this character loosely on a marginal local writer named Tor Ulven.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY View our high-resolution “Reprise” image gallery. RELATED READING Read more film reviews from critic Patrick McDonald.

“My co-writer and I were certainly big fans of his,” Trier said. “There are many writers, though, like Salinger and the French writer Maurice Blanchot who were also very hard-line, linguistically oriented and reclusive authors. [They had an] incredible ability to play upon absence as the most seductive tool there is.”

In the end, “Reprise” is a story about friendship, but it’s the shy and tentative friendship of early adulthood. It’s also about love, but it’s the damaging and obsessive emotion that is sometimes hard to control. In essence, Trier has created an honest accountability to those going through the time or those who remember it.

“We wanted to portray a state of mind rather than just an observed reality from the outside,” Trier said. “Part of who we are in any given moment is our past, our dreams and our memories. All those things come into any moment.”

Trier concluded: “I do think film can show that without being strangely alienating. ‘Reprise’ seems to be communicating with people, which makes me happy.”

By PATRICK McDONALD Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com