Oslo, August 31st (2011)

By CinemaSerf

Anders Danielsen Lie offers a really quite intense performance here as the recovering drug addict "Anders". His physicians think he's sufficiently improved to be able to spend a day, unsupervised, in Oslo, with family and friends and to have an interview for a job. Initially it all goes well. He drops in on "Thomas" (Hans Olav Brenner) and his family and is geared up (not literally) for his interview. That's where the wheels come off and we spend the rest of his day as he reminisces about the past, encounters some of those important to that past and gradually appears to be coming to terms with what he considers best for his future. Joachim Trier uses the gentle pacing of this drama to allow Lie to slowly demonstrate his character's sense of introspection and considered self-destruction. This isn't an ill-educated man who grew up in squalor or depravity, this is an erudite and engaging "Anders" who comes from a decent, loving, home that's not without it's ups and downs, but ought to have provided him with more of an emotional robustness that we are presented with here. There is a solid cast of supporting actors - Malin Crépin ("Malin") strong amongst them, as his brain appears to be putting his house in order. It's not an easy film to sit through. It's traumatic in a delicate and measured sort of way, and Lie delivers us a persona with whom it's easy enough to empathise and want to give a good shake to, too.