By Sophie Blum on May 23, With Oslo, August 31st opening Friday , the Norwegian director of lit-set chronicle Reprise turns to a more solitary portrait of a sharp-witted, depressed addict looking up old friends. What led you to adapt Le Feu Follet for the 21st century? Someone who has such high ideals and clear ideas about what could be achieved in life, and then is completely unable to achieve it, and the tragedy of that.
So that drew me to it, more than the aspect of him also being an addict. But another fact is that I grew up skateboarding in Oslo. That was my life for many years, and my friends went into all different directions after we quit skateboarding. Why did people with such similar backgrounds to myself end up in such bad places? This story allowed me to explore that. The film is about both a person and a city.
To what extent is this about Oslo and Norwegian national identity as opposed to Anders personally? I think you would find a lot of these resourceful smart people that get very lost in many places in the world.
I had a very strange experience with my previous film, Reprise , which we made in Norway, and we tried to be local and specific. I feel for that sort of nostalgia but I also know about the dangers of it.
Film has to move—a good film image to me is more allegorical, and at its best possible could carry multiple meanings. Light carries emotion, images are sensuous—you look at an image and you just want to be there or you get drawn to it or it can be mysterious.
