"Oslo, August 31" by Norwegian Director Joachim Trier Screens at Chicago Film Festival

Norwegian director Joachim Trier, in an homage to French New Wave cinema, has brought "Oslo, August 31" to the Chicago 47^th International Film Festival. The 96-minute film focuses on Anders Danielsen, a 34-year-old reformed drug addict.

The film opens with Anders following a tryst with a young woman in a motel. He seems moody, lonely, isolated, alienated. Eventually, he walks to a nearby lake, puts rocks in his jacket pocket (a la Virginia Woolf) and wades into the lake, in an apparent attempt to commit suicide. He is not successful, however, and returns to the drug rehabilitation facility from which he had been granted an overnight pass.

As the film progresses, we find out that Anders is within 2 weeks of completing his drug rehabilitation program. It's been 10 months since he has had so much as a beer. Anders was on an evening leave and having a rendezvous with the Swedish girl in the motel, from which he seems to have derived no joy whatsoever. Anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness, seems to afflict him in his psychological suffering.

While on his way to a job interview, Anders tells an old friend, "Nobody needs me. Not really." He feels guilt, shame and is experiencing low self-esteem, realizing the hell he has put his family and friends through. His parents have sold their house to pay for his treatment. His longtime girlfriend Iselin will not have anything to do with him. His old friend Thomas (now married to Rebekka and a father to young Albert, who is teething) is visited by Anders, and they have a philosophical discussion about life and death. Thomas, who is an academic, quotes Proust, "Trying to understand love by looking at a nude woman is like trying to understand time by taking a clock apart."

Anders confides to his old friend that "I have serious doubts about how I'm going to live without it" (drugs). A discussion of the pros and cons of suicide follows, with Thomas saying, "If someone wants to destroy himself, society should allow himself to do it," and Anders contributing, "I've always thought happy people must be morons."

Anders describes his upbringing in voice-over: A family who values intellectual achievement and finds it superior to athletic success; a mother and father who are contemptuous of the less eloquent. His family viewed religion as a weakness. Anders muses, "They never told me how friendships dissolve. They would always help me. They were stricter with my sister than with me."

In another philosophical discussion taking place at a café where Anders meets with his sister, he overhears two people saying, "Removing the main character is radical, but it works."

The question in "Oslo, August 31" is whether removing the main character (Anders) will work. This film demonstrates in excruciatingly depressing fashion that self-loathing is a bitch.