Competition review - LOUDER THAN BOMBS by Joachim Trier

In case you missed his previous works, Joachim Trier sums it up for a wider international audience in his English language feature debut Louder Than Bombs, in competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival.

 

Joachim Trier's frantic sophistication is bound to get even greater exposure with his English language debut Louder Than Bombs, which revolves around the difficult and strained relationship between a good natured and fragile father and his two sons - one an introverted teenager from whom he is estranged, the other struggling to cope with his new role as a father and husband. The situation is intensified by the occasion that brings them together under the same roof again - a major exhibition that is to celebrate the works of their mother and wife, a French war photographer, and an article that is to reveal that her death was not a result of an accident; it was suicide.

 

Louder Than Bombs is multi-layered not only in narrative but also in themes, that can be narrowed down to the concept of inability to express true feelings or narrowed down even further with the word "alienation", both of which are presented in disarmingly honest ways. It is stuctured more like a novel than a film, with free uses of flashbacks and more eccentric sequences that provide a more insightful perspective in the mind of the characters, and even play around openly with the concept of viewpoint. Nevertheless, despite the intuitive blend of style and an intense and sometimes even distressed rhythm, Trier reveals traditionalist influences from the adult fifties melodramas to high school coming of age films of the eighties.

The cast of big names is bound to help the film's exposure and distribution. It's good to see Gabriel Byrne return to top form on the big screen with his sensible portrayal of the good natured and yet infinitely vulnerable patriarch, who offers a sensitive look at masculinity in general. Newcomer Devin Druid shines in the role of the teenager, with his authentic portrayal of teenage awkwardness and fragility, steals the show. Isabelle Huppert's French war photographer character is the only one who comes across as slightly underworked and disappointing, a little stereotypical and archetypal both as a French intellectual or a war photographer. Nevertheless, an enigmatic lengthy close up of her face, that breaks up the fast beat of the pace, and in which she breaks the fourth wall, remains one of the film's most powerful moments.

 

Truth be told, Louder than Bombs is incredibly interesting and obviously inspired, but a little over worked and perhaps even over thought to the point of seeming slightly artificial. It is true that the blending of realism and a more parallel and fantastic perception of life is something that Trier plays a lot with. In this sense, the fact that the film is shot on film also shows this. But it is also Trier himself, who does little to hide the fact that he is an outsider looking into the American popular culture, offering a fresh outsider's take within the universal appeal of the story itself. There is space for provocative excesses in Trier's work. However, we still have to wait for a more compact vision in which everything shows a more mature and succesful balance.