To be young, gifted and Norwegian

The COMMUNITY of international cinema could certainly do worse for an ambassador than Joachim Trier, director and co-writer of "Reprise," his debut feature. The tall and lanky 34-year-old, who as a teenager was skateboarding champion of Norway, is dapper, thoughtfully playful and unassumingly charming, a far cry from the pedantic, wearying didacticism so often associated by general audiences with European art-house offerings.

"Reprise" arrives in U.S. theaters with the imprimatur of Scott Rudin, fresh off his Oscar triumph for "No Country for Old Men," credited as an executive producer. As the film begins, two twentysomething men (played by Anders Danielsen Lie and Espen Klouman Hoiner) stand at an Oslo mailbox, ready to send off the manuscripts they are convinced will make them each literary sensations. One will have his book published and achieve instant acclaim before suffering a mental and emotional collapse, while the other will continue to languish in stable obscurity for the time being.

Full of flashbacks and possible flash-forwards, strange asides, freeze-frames, on-screen titles and references to specific bands, books and movies, the film has an assured style that is at once wildly free-wheeling and meticulously structured. It all adds up to a look at the young person's process of becoming, how we each evolve into the people we are, with a surprising mix of humor, poignancy and sympathy.

"One Norwegian critic said that 'Reprise' was about how the artist is just an image," said Trier during a recent stop in Los Angeles. "But I actually think there's a genuine yearning in these guys to try to do something real, and it's just really hard these days, with a sort of post-ironic society.

"It's about the constructed-ness of identity. What shoes you wear and what records you listen to become who you are, but it's also about trying to transcend that and do something more sincere. It's the yearning, at least, that's in the film."

In its attention to the group dynamics of friendship among young people, the ways in which relationships fall in and out of favor and importance, "Reprise" focuses on that time in life when a specific rock show or a certain party can come to seem like a turning point, an event of life-altering significance way beyond just a night out.

"There are so many films that try to articulate something specific about guy-girl relationships," said Trier, "and I think in my 20s what really changed things for me were certain friendships I made or certain things that didn't work out with my group of friends. These were very important events in my life."