NYFF ’17: Thelma

Maybe it is just as well Thelma is poorly socialized late-bloomer, considering her raging hormones can make birds crash into windows. Her confused sexual identity takes on nearly biblical proportions in Joachim Trier’s Thelma (trailer here), Norway’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 55th New York Film Festival.

Go ahead and blame Thelma’s Evangelical Christian parents, Trond and Unni. Trier wants you to. He even shows Trond tempted to shoot his young daughter in the back of the head during a hunting trip in the opening prologue. Eventually, we will learn her parents had good reason to be freaked out by the little girl, but first we will root for the home-schooled Thelma as she finally tries to chart her own course as a university student in Oslo.

Just attending classes and living on her own are new experiences for Thelma, but her attraction to the pretty and popular Anja, confuses her greatly. In fact, the stirring of feelings will even induce seizures in the poor girl. Yet, a magnetic force seems to be drawing them together. Unfortunately, it might also ignite her darker, Carrie-like powers.

You can definitely tell Thelma is a Scandinavian film, in part due to its severely icy vibe and the ultra-modernist architecture. It would probably spoilery to discuss her supernatural powers, but they are somewhat unique—and also subject to heavily allegorical interpretation. Trier plays up the repressed lesbian angle, probably because it more closely relates to his angsty prior films, like Louder than Bombs and Oslo, August 31st, but Thelma’s developmental arc might have better suited his co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt, who helmed the subtly surreal and richly challenging Blind.

Still, Trier creates a palpable sense of mystery. Eili Harboe and Kaya Wilkins forge some convincingly halting, painfully-awkward-in-a-collegiate-kind-of-way chemistry as Thelma and Anja, respectively. Yet, it is Henrik Rafaelsen and Ellen Dorrit Peterson who really make a lasting impression as the Puritanical but understandably conflicted parents, dramatically humanizing them, despite Trier’s efforts to stack the deck against them.

Jakob Ihre’s crisp cinematography and Ola Fløttum’s minimalist score reinforce the chilly, Nordic vibe. Despite all the roiling passions, this is a cold, deliberately crafted film. We can see its kinship with Vogt’s Blind, even though he was not at the helm. Recommended for fans of cerebral arthouse genre films, Thelma screens this Friday (10/6) and Saturday (10/7), as a Main Slate selection of the 2017 New York Film Festival.

Louder than Bombs: Trier Directs Huppert, in English

Just like T.E. Lawrence and Buford Pusser before her, it seems cosmically wrong that celebrated war photographer Isabelle Reed died in a motor accident. However, the awkward circumstances surrounding her death are more likely closer to that of Ernest Hemingway. Her widower Gene Reed has tried to shield their youngest, moodiest son from the truth, but an upcoming press tribute is almost certain to broach the inconvenient subject. The father and his two sons will struggle to finally come to terms with her death in Joachim Trier’s first English language feature, Louder than Bombs (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

To mark a round number anniversary of Reed’s passing, her friends and admirers have organized a career retrospective exhibition. To tie-in, her wordsmith partner will write a personal appreciation of her life and work for the Times magazine or something very much like it. He duly warns Gene Reed that he will not duck the eight-hundred-pound gorilla. That only gives the long-suffering father a few days to level with the increasingly surly and anti-social Conrad. His grown brother Jonah seems to have dealt with her loss, but that is only a superficial impression. Deep down, the new father is probably the most dysfunctional member of the family.

For an angst-fueled domestic tragedy, a considerable amount of stuff happens in Bombs. Inevitably, it all boils down to life is not fair. As one might expect of the busy narrative, some of it works and some of it does not. Poor Gene Reed serves as the glue holding it all together, constantly sacrificing his subplots for the sake of others. However, Gabriel Byrne plays him with such profound sorrow, he gives the film a deeply humane core.

Of course, Isabelle Huppert outshines everyone as her namesake. She effectively haunts the film, dominating the ensemble despite her limited flashback screen-time. As the not so mature Jonah, Jesse Eisenberg also surprises with the quality of his work and the character flaws he reveals along the way. However, as the Number Two Son, Devin Druid feels like he is doing a third rate riff on Wes Bentley’s brooding teen in American Beauty. Conversely, David Strathairn dramatically elevates the film during his pivotal confrontation with Byrne as his wife’s suspiciously close colleague.

Indeed, the are moments in Bombs that rings with brutal honesty and forgiving compassion, but there is also a good deal of uncomfortable filler. Those messy interludes are rather surprising given the uniformly Spartan elegance of co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt’s directorial debut Blindness, which is sure to appreciate critically even further as time passes. Still, when Bombs connects, it leaves you smarting.

It might be inconsistent and even derivative with respects to Conrad’s resentments and fixations, but when it finishes, you know you have seen a film. Recommended with all its warts and ragged edges for patrons of mature chamber-dramas, Louder than Bombs opens this Friday (4/8) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza.

Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st

The good thing about being a self-destructive junkie is that you never have to take responsibility.  A case in point, one drug addict will blame everyone but himself for the hash he made of his life in Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31^st (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York at the IFC Center.

Trier kicks off the film with a voice-over montage of the fond memories and lasting friendships various narrators forged in the Norwegian capital.  Anders is not one of them.  He is a user who has run out of people to use.  Though his release from rehab is imminent, he nonetheless flirts with suicide in an opening scene.  Instead, he sticks to the plan formulated for him, making his first day trip return to Oslo for an interview with a literary magazine.  Once a talented writer, Anders drops some promising soundbites, but when the discussion predictably turns to the gaps in his resume, he loses his cool.

From this point on, Anders goes off his counselor’s script, catching up with old friends and revisiting the scenes of his not-so past life.  Given his reputation, nobody is very happy to see him, except the married Thomas, perhaps his one remaining true friend.  Needless to say, Anders is not looking to spread a lot of joy as he falls back into old habits, while repeatedly leaving thinly veiled cry-for-help messages for an ever-so unfortunate ex-girlfriend.

The overriding point of OA31 is that it is all entirely Andres’ fault.  Trier presents Oslo as a beautiful city of just the right size—big enough to be cosmopolitan, but small enough to foster close, meaningful relationships.  All around him, Anders observes evidence of everyday people making the sort of connections he chose to spurn.

Even though the back of his head is Trier’s preferred focal point through the film, Anders Danielsen Lie is an intense screen presence as his namesake.  There is nothing more pathetic than the formerly cool and he projects that surly misery perfectly.  There are also some nice supporting turns fleshing out the film, but they all enter and exit quite quickly.  Yet, Anders Borchgrevink supplies what might be the film’s defining moment in one of its briefest roles.  Appearing as Øystein, a bitter acquaintance of Anders, he reminds the junkie character and the audience of his problematic nature, lest we start to fall for his appeals for pity.

In a sense, the naturalistic virtues of OA31 limit its dramatic effectiveness.  So resolute is Trier in denying Anders the sympathy he craves, his ultimate tragedy leaves viewers cold.  Nonetheless, the film simultaneously serves as an appealing valentine to the clean and sparkling title city, which is quite an unusual stylistic twofer to pull off.  An appropriately chilly Nordic morality tale, well executed in the uncomfortably intimate Cassavetes tradition, Oslo August 31^st is recommended for sophisticated cineastes when it opens this Friday (5/25) at the IFC Center.