At dere tør!

Bleak social realism wasn't just the trend in Norwegian cinema during the 1970s and early 1980s, it was the norm. And this coming-of-age story from the less affluent parts of Oslo fitted right into that mould. Reinert is a young adult without much purpose or ambition in life who steals a car with a friend and is subsequently forced to take a hard, new look at the lifestyle he and his friends are leading. They are smoking pot and drinking in parks, lambasting bourgeois concepts, and cursing at their mothers for being too compliant. In other words, rebelling more or less like youths have always done. And hopefully growing up in the process. What's pleasant with writer/director Lasse Glomm's film is that it isn't moralizing - at least not to the degree which was typical for its contemporaries. The characters created by Ole Møystad, Kristin Hauge and a beautiful Eirik Kvåle in the lead are admittedly overacted at times, but they come to life as real people caught up in their zeitgeist. A semi-iconic ending wraps up what turns out to be a balanced and at times even nuanced film.

Lasse Glom's second feature film as director ""Stop it!", Norwegian title "At dere tør!" (which can be translated into something like "How do you dare!" i s about two 16 year old best friends doing petty crime. They stealing a Citroën in Oslo but are discovered by the police. After a long police chase on e of the boys are shot by the police when fleeing away. He dies before reaching the hospital. Six months later the police man is acquitted on all accounts in court.

The surving boy, Reinert Nilsen is played by Eirik Kvåle, which never went to play another film role. This is a youth movie, where we see everything from the youth's standing. Still the movie got an 18 year adult rating on cinema in Norway. As a youth movie this is really up there on hitting the zeit geist of the 70'ies as it turns into the 80'ies. This is the time for the second youth rebellion, with rock music coming up with new sub genres like punk, goth, techno and alternative rock.

This movie has music written and performed by the late Anne Grete Preuss which then features in very popular bands. A visit to the Kalvøya Festival 1979 is fun to see, with Preuss on stage with Veslefrikk. She often worked with Lasse Glom on his productions. The script is written by renown Espen Haavardsholm, and is inspired by real events in Oslo in 1975.

Today that is ridiculous, but seen back at that time with fighting drug use and youth crime in Oslo, maybe it's understandable in 1980.

The film is about youth and criminality, not only car theft, but drug use, housesquatting, unemployment, but also the bad dialogue between police and the city youths and their parents.

The dialogue is stiff from some of the young actors, but the movie is a depiction of Oslo in 1980, and if you can forget the weakness of the dialogue this is a movie well worth a watch. So is the shops back then and so on, even with the prices. (A bottle of Solo soda costs NOK 2,85 in the shop back then. Now it's more than 10 times that.) The film is a gem when it comes to depicting the Norwegian capital back then, and if you can forget the stiffness of some of the young actors, you'll enjoy this.

The movie premiere in Norway August 29th and a month alter in Sweden, and the movie attended film festivals around, among others CIFF in Chicago.

It's not been easy to find this movie the latter years, but it's now been made available in 2024 when it was released on interregional Blu-Ray Disk by Norwegian Film Classics as the 27th release in a new series with classics, NFK0027, with subtitles in English, and is supposed to be held in stock for film lovers.