What I wanted to do with REPRISE wasx depict a very specific cultural environment, with characters that I know intimately. I wanted to make a film about friendships and aspirations that fail. I wanted to make a film that was as full of contrasts in its form as the lives of the characters in it. I wanted to use cinematic language that reflected the narrative culture in some ways typical of a gang of 23 year old men, full of anecdotes and digressions, searching and open, but with pain and disappointment lying just below the surface.
I wanted to show a group of young men, exposed and vulnerable, with all their dreams, their doubts and illusions, world champions and children at one and the same time. Without smoothing any of the rough edges I wanted to show their complex and often fearful relationships with the opposite sex. I wanted to "shoot inwards" and examine that particular type of contempt (often self-contempt) which is often--paradoxically enough--part of the glue that holds a gang of friends together.
What is intended to be different about REPRISE is the use of contrasts and contradictions in the material, the mixture of humor and seriousness. Everyday, lightweight situations are mixed with darker and more poetic scenes. Passages of tenderness alternate with frantic montages from the gang's past (or possibly their future?). REPRISE should seem as rich in ideas and enthusiasm as young men of that age are.
REPRISE is intended to be both light hearted and sad, amusing and melancholic. That's why its frame of reference extends from Punk rock to French poetry.
The freewheeling passion of youth and the unpredictable perils of fate are both the subject and the breathtaking form of Joachim Trier’s lean and kinetic journey through friendship, love, madness and creativity: REPRISE. Trier viscerally captures the way life takes off at rocket-speed in the beginning of adulthood – and the what-ifs and why-nots that both drive and haunt us as the unbridled hopes of youth come to a screeching halt. The fast-moving story kicks off just as Phillip (ANDERS DANIELSON LIE) and Erik (ESPEN KLOUMAN-HOINER) stand at the mailbox, two cocky, grinning rebels full of 20 year-old verve and dreams, their whole lives hanging in the balance at this singular moment. Each is about to ship off his first novel to publishers, each is hoping to become a wildly influential "cult author," each has visions of a new life of non-stop intensity, brilliance, romance and nightclubbing. Fast-forward six months. These reveries have crashed, hard, into reality. Phillip, whose novel garnered instant acclaim and turned him into a mini-celebrity, has had a terrifying breakdown and is just about to be released from a psychiatric hospital. Erik, who never sold his novel, is still pecking away, determined to follow in the footsteps of his undying hero, a reclusive but idolized writing genius, no matter what it takes. REPRISE explores not just what happens to Phillip and Erik as they pick up the pieces but what might have happened to them, what they imagine could happen, what they fear will possibly happen and what they can’t see actually happening. Nimbly moving both backwards and forwards in time – via a dazzling mix of flashbacks, rapid-fire editing, philosophical voiceovers and comical flights of fancy — the film traces how Erik and Phillip arrived at this precipice where exuberant youth runs into the harsh light of day … and witnesses the emotionally gripping aftermath.
