“Guys in long-term relationships become so lame. They get sucked into this feminine sphere of TV series and nice dinners. They get less and less time to read and listen to music. Eventually they don’t even miss it. They end up as understimulated, bourgeois retards.” So proclaims one of a group of friends in the Norwegian film Reprise, young men out of the university, heads filled with dreams of art, music, and literature (and often as not stomachs filled with alcohol). This fellow in particular is more than a bit of an idiot, with opinions about women that are even less generous, and it’s no surprise to see him later in the film hosting a dinner party with his new girlfriend. Reprise is about the blessing of youth to have the time, the ambition, and the willingness to soak up influence from everywhere around you, as well as the curse of not knowing what to do with all that inspiration. It centers on two friends, Phillip (Anderson Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman Høiner), both 23, both aspiring novelists. As the film opens, they are mailing their first manuscripts off to publishers, and we see a rapid montage of their future success as they perhaps picture it, filled with unexpected twists and influences. But in a minute it’s down to the real world: Six months later Phillip, whose novel was published to lavish acclaim, has been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, while Erik, whose novel was rejected, is still holding out hope, and still hanging out with friends who have their own dreams of Art. Reprise is the feature debut of 30-something Joachim Trier, who appears to have been weaned more on the experimentalism of the French nouvelle vague than on the more cynical manipulations of his distant relative Lars. The story is filled with flights of fantasy into the memories and potential futures of his characters, who like artsy young men for so many years scowl a lot, dress in dark clothing and worship musicians who favor drone and minor keys. There’s a lot of Joy Division on the soundtrack, which may or may not be an ironic comment; my guess is that Trier wants to have it both ways, indulging the morose natures of these youngsters while intimating that they will grow through their pretensions and be the better for them. The same may be said of the director, whose talent here is obvious and abundant but not yet wholly developed.

—m. faust