Pictureland

In retrospect, the direction Joachim Trier's second feature, Oslo, August 31st might seem as inevitable as the course of some frigid Nordic river toward the oblivion of the sea.  What distinguishes Mr. Trier's haunting, graceful film are the unexpected turns taken along the way as its protagonist, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) goes about a last discursive, quietly desperate day in Oslo. Anders' intention is announced with water during the first minutes of "Oslo."  But it's not a river he chooses, rather a remote lake, surrounded by forest at which the disconsolate man tries to pull a Virginia Woolf, to state the case rather crudely.  After a determined walk through the forest during which it is clear only that this is not to be an enjoyable romp through the trees, we have the vantage point over Anders' shoulder as he contemplates the body of water from the considerable height of a rock ledge.  The countless wavelets seem to murmur, to beckon him, an...

Some twenty years after his death, it's still difficult to separate Serge Gainsbourg's outsize public persona from his music.  Even casual fans, be they real or the precocious protagonists of films like Youth and Revolt and the recent Submarine , tend to use the playing of Gainsbourg tunes, their conspicuous appreciation of the  chain-smoking Frenchman, as shortcuts to cool.  Such fans, who might enjoy a spin of pop classics like "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Ford Mustang," probably don't realize the breadth of Gainsbourg's musical output.  Starting within the fairly polite parameters of the French chanson - a tradition that he didn't take for a spin on the dance floor so much as hustle out into a dark, rain-glistening alley and have his way with -  the man born Lucien Ginsburg went on to compose some of the pop/rock tunes for which he is best known, to work in jazz, calypso, funk, reggae, electronica and seemingly every genre known to man.  This in...