Oslo, August 31st

Directed by Joachim Trier

(Not rated)

***

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It’s rare that a downer of a movie leaves you wide awake, said David Edelstein in New York magazine. As he follows a recovering junkie’s return to the big city for a job interview and 24 hours of temporary freedom from rehab, director Joachim Trier makes every moment of the journey quietly momentous. Anders Danielsen Lie’s performance in this Norwegian-language film “can’t be overpraised,” said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out New York. He turns every encounter into an existential crossroads: A compliment “triggers a flicker of old confidence,” a sip of sparkling wine “signals a worrying backslide.” From scene to scene, “you sense the fragility” of the character’s fate “as it hangs in the balance.” Oslo, August 31st is not about just addiction, said Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter. It’s about how any of us look at life once we’ve decided we’re no longer young. But Trier will turn off some viewers because he’s failed to seed his story with hope. Instead, his protagonist “all but announces his hopelessness even before he leaves the rehab center.”