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(43,096 posts) Fri Feb 4, 2022, 10:32 PM Feb 2022

'The Worst Person in the World' Is Devastatingly Relatable

Joachim Trier’s film about an aimless 30-year-old is witty, empathetic, and one of the best movies of the year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/02/worst-person-in-world-review-millennial/621459/

Julie (played by Renate Reinsve), the 30-year-old protagonist of The Worst Person in the World, keeps getting stuck in conversations about her future. The issue is relatable for many a Millennial; Julie is beautiful, intelligent, and hardworking, but she’s struggling to understand what her place in the world should be, what career she should pursue, what kind of person she should settle down with. In every case, inspiration has yet to strike, perhaps because the world itself is becoming less inspiring. “You seem to be waiting for something. I don’t know what,” remarks her boyfriend, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie).

What are any of us waiting for? Joachim Trier’s film, the third in his loose “Oslo trilogy” of witty melodramas set in Norway’s capital city, is a study of a very particular character. The viewer learns about Julie’s dramatic family, her interests and kinks, her muddled career aspirations, and her ambiguous feelings about having children. But the film’s also a devastatingly resonant portrait of an unsettled generation. Julie supposedly has an expansive future ahead of her, but when every choice feels predictable, the hope of discovering something genuinely thrilling is basically extinguished.

Read: Millennials don’t stand a chance

As such, the film’s title is a winking joke: Trier opens on a shot of Julie in a stunning black dress, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, then cuts to the title card. Could this intriguing young woman really be the worst person in the world? Of course not, but Trier (who wrote the film with his usual collaborator, Eskil Vogt) quickly lays out why the audience might roll their eyes at Julie’s aimlessness, showing how her initial plans to become a doctor morphed into studying psychology, a career prospect she then abandoned to pursue professional photography after scrolling through her iPhone camera roll.

So perhaps Julie is something of a flibbertigibbet; she’s also self-possessed, intelligent, and wryly insightful, all conveyed through Reinsve’s sparkling performance. Trier has specialized in this kind of nuanced characterization with films such as Reprise, Thelma, and Louder Than Bombs. The Worst Person in the World is his fullest work to date, a personal narrative that brims with wit and empathy. Making a film about a generational mood is a nigh-impossible challenge, but Trier achieves it by never losing focus of the singular character he’s created.

snip

Renate Reinsve won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for the lead role.