Now here’s a movie I can relate to: smart, awkward creative types stumbling through their mid-20s. Professional skateboarder (!) Joachim Trier’s debut feature is an intelligent, lucid exploration of the mind of the overindulged intellectual male, the type who masks insecurities with trivia and medias consumed. Perhaps it’s all a little too close to home for me to observe it objectively, but I admire the film tremendously and urge you to take a look at it if it plays near you. Trier deftly blends wonky stylization (the speed-ramping in the film’s Truffaut-aping opening actually feels fresh for the first time since 1999) with intelligently observational behavioral study, leading to a film that’s as intellectually moving as it is entertaining to look at.

I was left wondering at one point, and this is the author bringing his own personal concerns into his reading, what exactly these young men do for a living when they’re not working on novels, having nervous breakdowns, or being cool.

That’s it. No serious analysis here. The film, as much as a self-portrait as you get unless verging into Caveh Zahedi territory, pretty much does its own analysis, really. You should see it, and then we should all have a conversation about it.

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