Reprise

2008
7.3| 1h47m| R| en| More Info
Released: 16 May 2008 Released
Producted By: Miramax
Country: Norway
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers.

Genre

Drama

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Reprise (2008) is currently not available on any services.

Director

Joachim Trier

Production Companies

Miramax

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Reprise Audience Reviews

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.
Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Cecil-B Like the slim volume published by one of the two young authors who are the central figures in this coming of age tale, Reprise is thoughtful, experimental, engaging, and intellectually ambitious. It's a difficult film to watch, not only because the disjunctive editing requires the viewer to keep his mind focused, but because the depictions of personal distress are painful to see. The auteur is right to leaven the scenes with (downright funny) humor, but nobody should sit down in front of this one expecting to see a "comedy". I'd like to make a special comment about the nice distinction made between the struggles of the two protagonists, one of whom suffers from a serious mental disorder (what looks like a severe depression with manic features). While both young men are heavily affected by the prevailing Western patterns of early masculine adulthood (meaning that they can act like mean-spirited 7 year old boys toward one another and toward the young women that their big-boy hormones drive them toward), one of the fellows, Phillip, does not seem to grow from his experiences. It's not that Phillip is "crazy" all the time, but when he's apparently in a well-compensated (stable) state, his actions revolve around self-involved attempts to recreate (reprise?) and re-do past episodes that felt mortifying. When he asks his would-be girlfriend to go to Paris with him AGAIN, it's not to have a good time. Paris-with-girlfriend was the precipitating event for his first mental breakdown, which culminated in a horrific suicide attempt followed by a stay in a psychiatric hospital, and a continuing regimen of pills that certify that he's "sick". This second trip becomes an obsessive re-creation and "improvement" upon all the things that Phillip blames for his collapse into the madness of misery. Need I tell you that the City-of-Lights becomes a very dark place once again, and it isn't long before Erik has to see his friend clad in pajamas and sitting in the sad corridor of a hospital. Phillip is trapped. Erik and the other "buddies" are not, and that that gives them a chance to take another step on their own paths of development. The city of Oslo is used as a metaphor for any particular place in which we are accustomed to spending our lives. It can be that some places are more confining than others, which may be true of Oslo, but regardless of that, the path ahead for a given individual may lead right out of whatever "town" he lives in.
Joseph Sylvers Good direction, great soundtrack, dialog, editing, a surprisingly full movie from a first time director.Two Norwigian friends in their early twenties Philip and Erik, submit there first manuscripts on the same day, one is accepted and becomes a...(read more) critical darling, the other swims in a sea of rejection letters. In the first five minutes we see at least two altered timeliness of what might have happened to these characters had they both been accepted or had they both been rejected, Run Lola Run style in accelerated montage lead by voice over.The world which could have been, is then followed by six months later, when Erikis getting out o mental institute after a having suffered a breakdown sometime before, Philip is sticking with him, keeping a spare key, making sure he takes his medication on time, and still trying to get his own work published, which it shortly is.Erik and Philip, and their motley crew of friends like the the crude Morten singer of such classic punk songs like "Fingerfucked by the Prime Minister", and the intellectually over-zealous "Porno Lars", all hang out and well just hang out.Erik is trying to recreate his obsessive relationship(against dr's orders), going as far as to meticulously re-create a trip they took to Paris. Philip is debating whether or not to dump his girlfriend so he can sew his whitely oats, and trying to escape the shadow of Eirk and their hero Stein Egl Dahl, their favorite author who also happens to live in their home town.As the title suggests, the film is about these characters trying to re-create, re-capture the past, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Are you holding onto your dreams or are you clinging to them, are your friends a support group or a crutch to keep out the "real world", do you really love her, or is she just an obsession, should you leave him, or are you just selfish. Is there any way to escape cliché, and live "genuinely"? These are questions which are especially pertinent to the coming of age twenty somethings in the film, but they are universal questions everyone probably at numerous times in their life will have to face. And this film captures them, the highs, the lows, and the cream filled centers...good stuff.
Seamus2829 Before I saw 'Reprise', I was warned by somebody who hated it that I would probably hate it as well. I am soooo glad I didn't listen to their (so called)voice of reason & went by my own gut feeling. Reprise is a tale of two school chums who are both aspiring writers who have sent manuscripts of their most recent works to a publisher,expecting "who knows what". Most of this film is a tale of modern Norwegian youth, dealing with the usual glut of existential angst that Gen Y'ers seem to deal with (partying,girlfriends,trying to deal with growing up,etc.). What I really appreciated was the fact that the film doesn't sink to the usual American realm of bad taste (endless jokes concerning farts,vomit,sexual dysfunction,boozing,doping,and who knows what else Seth Rogan can come up with). This film probably won't be of much relevance to those over the age of 40 (especially the choice of music,which tends to stick to music from the mid to late 1990's until now), but if you can get beyond that, Reprise will be a small,quiet surprise for open minded souls looking for a breath of fresh air from the glut of the usual films from the American sewer.
Steve Schonberger Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) are friends, both writers, both fans of elder writer Sten Egil Dahl (Sigmund Sæverud). They finish their books around the same time, and dare to submit them only by dropping them into the mailbox at the same time.While awaiting a reply, they hang out with their guy friends, a superficial bunch of misogynists who think girlfriends are a drag on creativity, free time, and ability to be interesting. IMDb lists Henning (Henrik Elvestad), Lars (Christian Rubeck), Morten (Odd Magnus Williamson), Jan Eivind (Henrik Mestad), and Geir (Pål Stokka), but I couldn't keep them all straight.Philip's book is accepted; Erik's is not. But while Erik suffers self-doubt and possibly, Philip suffers a nervous breakdown.A voice-over narrator (Eindride Eidsvold) blames Philip's nervous breakdown on his obsessive love for his girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge), who is advised not to visit him in the mental hospital to avoid making him worse. He reminisces about the trip he took her on to Paris, where he tricked her into falling in love with him, as he remembered it.SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Meanwhile, Erik manages to beat his book into publishable condition, and his editor Johanne (Rebekka Karijord) tries to talk him out of his title, Prosopopeia, which the editor considers too obscure. (The film doesn't ever define it; I had to look it up. It's a Greek word meaning "anthropomorphism" or "personification".) When it sells, he feels obligated to dump his girlfriend Lillian (Silje Hagen), apparently thinking himself too good for her once he's a published author. But he wimps out, and sticks with her.When Philip has recovered enough to be released from the mental hospital, they go back to their routine with the annoying guy friends. He tries to write another book. Kari and Philip meet up again, and they go back to Paris in hopes of repeating the falling-in-love trip (apparently the "reprise" of the title, which means roughly the same thing in Norwegian).Near the end, someone dies.Director Joachim Trier uses a style that is distinctive, but I'm not sure it's good. In most shots with more than one person, he frames the people just a little too tightly, with backs of heads in two-shots crowded out, and people on edges of group shots only half in the frame. Every scene seems to have a desaturated blue color to it. To the film's credit, the shots are in focus, and although most or all shots are hand-held they're steady. I rate the directing fair (5).The director and Eskil Vogt wrote the script. Although the directing isn't much good, the script is the film's worst weakness. Philip is mentally ill, which could make him an interesting subject for a film, but all the film does with his illness is show him enter and leave a mental hospital, and fail to write a decent second book. Erik struggles with his self-doubt and apparent lesser writing talent, but the film's presentation of him is so vague that his struggles aren't interesting either. Their literary idol is vaguely interesting in his brief screen time, but he's a bit part at best. Their male friends are unlikeable, but not in an interesting way – they're just a bunch of guys who hang around and complain about women.The most interesting characters are the three women. Kari is the best-developed character in the film, even though she gets less screen time than Philip or Erik. Johanne is interesting because she actually does something other than whine about teen-angst, which the mostly late-20s characters should have outgrown. Lillian is a small part, but she's interesting because the misogynist chorus seems to have a special dislike for her, which could be an interesting story.One good point in the script is that there are a few scattered scenes that are funny – not great comedy work, but at least it was a break from the tedium. Overall, I rate the story lackluster (4).The acting is all solid, most notably that of Viktoria Winge. But the good acting goes to waste on a script that is dull, and directing that obscures the performances.One good point of the film was interesting music, featuring Norwegian bands and various punk rock.On the basis of the lackluster story, and other elements that don't do much to elevate the film, I rate it lackluster (4) overall.My wife and I saw this at the 2007 Seattle International Film Festival. It was even worse for my wife than for me. She had seen it in Norway, sucked in by favorable reviews. She didn't like it. Then she ended up seeing again, because of an unannounced festival schedule change. I suggested she slip out and shop, or otherwise have some fun, but I figured I'd sit through it to see if it just didn't work for her. But she decided to give it a second try, thinking maybe there was something admirable about it that she missed the first time. No such luck; it was just as boring the second time.