Reprise - Like a veteran ball player, As Good As News is not writing a doubleheader today after watching one last night. The link takes you to a thorough review in Variety and I won't repeat it here. I enjoyed this Norwegian film as it followed the lives of two young writers from the point when they reach the mailbox to submit the manuscripts of their first novels for publication. Intellectual youth at work and play, humor, music, directorial techniques galore and Victoria Winge make Reprise worth seeing.
One question that no review seems to address (and I have no access to the film to check again for myself) -The soundtrack includes a voice over that speaks entirely in the conditional, i.e., . if the manuscripts of their first novels had been accepted (or not accepted in some scenarios), then..... such and such would happen. The voice over suggests the film will cover alternate versions of the two writers' lives. Reprise seemed to start down this path, returning to the mailbox scene after one brief scenario that felt almost like a false start. Only one version of the story was developed with any depth. The conditional approach added a certain edge to the voice over, but it almost seems as if the film abandoned its original structure in the editing room and didn't bother to go back and change the voice over. Is the conditional future voice over the voice of the screenwriter (perhaps Erik), considering what will happen to his characters as it appears on the screen? Is it some obscure difficulty in the translation from Norwegian to English? What is happening here?
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