Oslo, August 31st

Oslo, August 31st (Oslo, 31. august, 2011) is Joachim Trier's Norwegian drama you can watch online on iFILM. Anders, 34, is nearly through rehab when he's let out for a single day to attend a job interview in the city he used to call home.

He's bright, well-raised, easy to like, and certain he has already wasted it all. The film follows him hour by hour, from an early reunion with an old friend to one long, restless night. Each conversation measures the man he is against the man he might have been. He wanders a summer Oslo, eavesdrops on strangers in a café, phones his sister, slips into a party. Anders Danielsen Lie carries almost every frame, and the whole thing rests on his face. A young Renate Reinsve turns up briefly, years before her breakout for the same director.

Trier loosely reworks Pierre Drieu La Rochelle's novel into a quiet study of a man at the edge. It doesn't push and it doesn't console — it just stays beside him for a day, which lands harder than any louder tragedy would. One for viewers ready for slow, honest cinema. Stream Oslo, August 31st (2011) online on iFILM.