Saturday

Reprise is a Norwegian film about two young writers trying to publish their novels. Like Dans Paris (reviewed by me here) it's shot in the French New Wave style, and similarly deals with mental illness. The movie begins with the two friends putting their manuscripts into a letterbox, and the first five minutes is spent imagining what would've happened if both were published. However, only one is, and the pressures resultant from this drive him to a mental breakdown. We jump forward and backward in time for the next thirty minutes, imagining consequences, then seeing the real ones, having flashbacks for insignificant events, and a narrator that ironically knows everything ('in five seconds she's going to look at him' etc). The film, I have to admit, is relentlessly cool, swept along to the soundtrack of The Hives-like punk music. However, some techniques which start off cute, repeated five times become annoying. It is hit-and-miss. But this is film-making that is at least excited about film. They're interested in style and how it can tell a story. Occasionally you think 'if the filmmaker can manipulate the plot so much, why should I care about it?', but the anguish of these young men is sensitively told. The ending was unsatisfactorily ambiguous, which goes with the style, but I wasn't entirely happy with it. The Independent reviewer calls this film 'early Godard by way of Dawson's Creek', which is cruelly accurate, but also unfair. It's definitely worth watching - immediately you realise how indoctrinated you are to the American sentiment in film, and this movie is a refreshing change.