Review: Joachim Trier's Beguiling And Fascinating 'Louder Than Bombs' Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Gabriel Byrne & Isabelle Huppert

This is a reprint of our review from the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

The trend at Cannes this year, so far, has been English-language movies from foreign-language directors, often working in the language for the first time. We’ve already seen Matteo Garrone's "Tale Of Tales," and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Lobster,” with Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth,” and Michel Franco’s “Chronic” to come. But one of our most anticipated has been “Louder Than Bombs,” the third film, and first set in the U.S, for Norwegian helmer Joachim Trier. The director landed straight on our radars a while back with the dazzling “Reprise,” and proved to be more than a flash in the pan with the devastating “Oslo, August 31st” a few years later, and now he’s making his Cannes Competition debut. And while ‘Bombs’ is already proving to be divisive, I found it another beguiling and fascinating picture from the filmmaker.

The opening shot of the film is concerned with...