The first English-language feature from Norwegian director Joachim Trier (a distant relation of Lars von, and officially my preferred Trier), Louder Than Bombs is one of those movies that builds a small, nondescript, yet utterly convincing domestic world without seeming like it’s trying too hard. Trier’s film has the cerebral, elliptical quality of a great short-story collection, and an easy intimacy with its central family of grieving men, who face a terrible crossroads after the death of their matriarch, war photographer Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert).
Isabelle’s bereft husband, Gene (Gabriel Byrne), finds himself struggling to connect with his two sons—Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), who’s channeled his feelings about his mother’s death into success as an academic, and Conrad (Devin Druid), who’s kind of a teenage jerk.