Joachim Trier's film is based on the same 1931 French novel by Pierre-Eugène Drieu la Rochelle (the complex intellectual and Nazi sympathiser who committed suicide in 1945) that inspired Louis Malle's first fully accomplished film, Le feu follet. Malle's 30-year-old alcoholic upper-class hero revisits his life and old friends before committing suicide in Paris. In Oslo, August 31st, the Norwegian central character, Anders, is a drug addict from a similar background who makes his quietus after a day in the national capital. It's a cold, detached, very Scandinavian film, neither as sharp nor as oddly exhilarating as Malle's.