The Worst Person in the World
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum
Choices, choices, and choices. They confuse and confound today’s youngsters, and Julie is not really young. She is knocking 30 and played by Renate Reinsve, who won the Best Actress Award at 2021 Cannes. She headlines Joachim Trier’s Norwegian drama, The Worst Person the World, running for the upcoming Oscars in the Best International Feature category. On Mubi, the film, scripted by Trier and Eskil Vogt, conveys the uncertainty and dilemma faced by Julie. She is terribly unsure about what she wants out of life, and, worse, who is the man she should love. Wow!
There is the slightly toxic Aksel (Trier regular Ander Danielsen Lie) and Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). Aksel is a highly successful graphic novelist, who spends the major part of the day at his drawing board. Or he is busy signing his books at lavish parties but loves Julie to bits. And what about her? She thinks she is also in love with him, but when she runs into Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) at a party, an attraction pulls them together. In a very hilarious scene, both debate whether they should be unfaithful to their partners – Julie to Aksel, and Eivind to his wife. Short of kissing, they try out other things – and keep quipping but this is not infidelity, and that may be!
In what appears as a convenient plot point, Aksel and Julie have a major quarrel over having a child. He is 42 and feels it is high time to settle down with a family. Besides, he loves kids. Their parting is bitter, and Julie rushes into the arms of Eivind, but a woman who is so indecisive about her life, always finds an excuse to justify her actions. While it was children with Aksel, it is Eivind’s lack of ambition. “Do you want to sell coffee (he works at a cafe) till you are 50”, she screams.
Ah, Julie oh Julie. Trier spins a dramatic story around her: she studies medicine, but steps into psychology – spending her scholarship money on buying expensive cameras and lenses. And finally stops; she becomes a photographer.
The work tries to explore Julie’s attitude to reality. She begins to feel that while the lives of all those around her are sorted out, her’s is not. She feels she is the worst person in the whole world. Though she lights the screen with her luminosity, drop-dead looks, and her charmingly carefree life, there is something missing in her world. She is aching, and Trier manages to establish this by moving across time zones and confounding situations.
Trier returns to arthouse fare with The Worst Person in the World – after his critically acclaimed Reprise (2006) and August 31 (2011). He has always had a passion for making movies about people similar to Julie – who is unsure about things but keeps herself busy doing pointless stuff. Like, for instance, the way she imprisons herself in relationships she has strong intuitions about. Negative ones. Now, will Trier make the cut on the big night?
