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.
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.