🍿 2022-06-13 18:00:00 – Paris/France.
Now on Hulu after dazzling audiences at film festivals around the world, The worst person in the world is a pick-and-choose drama/romantic/comedy/character study, wriggling in and out of categorization until critics can't help but indulge in torrents of superlatives. It was also an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay and International Film, but surprisingly not Best Actress for Renate Reinsve, who is a revelation. She's the main reason why acclaimed Norwegian director Joachim Trier's fifth film is such a thoughtful and delightful watch.
The essential: The description line says this movie is "four years in the life" of our protagonist Julie (Reinsve), and I'll take her word for it. Seems about right, I guess; it unfolds and begins through a dozen chapters of varying lengths, sharing the this and that of Julie's somewhat listless meander of existence. A woman tells part of the story in third person, sometimes speaking right over the same words spoken by the characters. Curious! The prologue reviews the usual restless nature of people in their early twenties: Julie, a university student, studies one thing, then another, adopts a new hairstyle, dumps her boyfriend, has an affair with a teacher, decides that she really likes photography. Has she finished school? I do not know. Not important. Somewhere along the line she started working in a bookstore in Oslo, which is by no means a bad job, but I doubt she got a degree in literacy or retail presentation.
One of the great this (or that) of Julie's life was meeting Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a popular underground comix artist. I think something was said about her fear of commitment, but then, who knows, she moves in with the guy. A good amount of time is spent here when Julie is 29 and Aksel is 43, when he feels the need to get married and have children, ideas about which she is insipid. They spend a weekend visiting some of his friends who are married and have children, and they hear a couple fighting violently and watch the adults wear themselves out caring for their children. Julie and Aksel laugh about it, and it establishes ce this, even if none of this is solid, because Julie will have none of this.
Did I mention that Julie is a very good writer? Well, she is. I also forgot to mention some of the chapter numbers and movie titles, but maybe you don't need that information? Probably not. Anyway, Chapter 2 is titled "Cheating," and it's a long sequence that begins with some kind of shindig where Aksel signs autographs and such and Julie decides she just wants to go home. On her way home, she impulsively crashes a wedding reception, where she helps herself to a drink, dances, and meets a man named Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). There's a spark, and an excitement, and a conversation about how they can manage to cheat on their SOs without actually cheating, which leads to each watching the other pee, and Julie farting while sitting on the toilet, it's so funny. They say goodbye and deliberately don't exchange numbers or names (because Facebook) and other chapters are titled like "Bad Timing", "Julie's Narcissistic Circus", and "Bobcat Wrecks Xmas". It goes on, and besides, this summary is completely in the spirit of the film, and more particularly of its very sympathetic protagonist. I'm sure not a tenth as endearing as her in her spread, but that's how it goes, I guess.
Photo: Everett Collection
What movies will this remind you of? : Pair The worst person in the world with Amélie and you will perish in an avalanche of bittersweet optimism.
Performance to watch: Reinsve inspires such great affection for her character, we just want to get on screen and hug Julie and tell her it's okay if she's flaky, because we're flaky too. Everyone is puffed up. They might say or pretend they aren't, but damn they are. We, I mean. We. We are.
Memorable dialogue: I can't remember who said this, but I'll take it further out of context for comedy's sake: "The most iconic asshole ever." Maybe Julie said it. Also this piece:
Aksel: But I As you flaky.
Narrator: Aksel said he liked it flaky.
Sex and skin: The skin isn't flaky, it's smooth and there's a good amount of it, sometimes graphic because it's a European film and not a film that was shot in Canada or California.
Our opinion : First of all, Julie isn't the worst person in the world, she's just flabby. Flaky, with a deep pang of displeasure. Some would say she's "directionless", but more accurately, she's "like a lot of people", or more accurately, "like pretty much most people", and even more accurately, "like all of us". Certainty? Ha! I laugh at the certainty. The only thing that is certain is that everyone is uncertain. Take ce, certainty! I hope you are humbled! And I don't know why I'm talking to you about certainty, because I'm as close to certainty as one can be without being really certain that certainty doesn't exist!
The centerpiece of the film is a sequence in which the entirety of the world freezes like a 3D diorama and Julie walks through it, around the usual obstacles to happiness and distanced from the one thing she really really wants right now. I cannot stress how wonderful the moment is, how miraculous it would be to enjoy such freedom, how exhilarating it would be to be like Julie and, when she is running alongside a couple who kisses, stops to move man's hand down to touch woman's buttocks. Release!
Funny, isn't it, that the film's most surreal moment is also the most relevant. Trier cultivates a multi-genre/genderless tone that feels more like life – funny, melodramatic, at the pace of the world and all its spins and pressures and others – than cinema, even though his film is structured to have a prologue and an epilogue to mark a beginning and an end. Yet Julie's life continues through the credits and beyond. Is not it? I know I've said "some would say" before but I'll say it again, to skip the argument, but some would say that Julie's situation (I almost said "dilemma", but "dilemma" rather, it's synonymous with "life") is generational, a scattering of attention and a lack of focus in the age of social media. But I would argue that it's universal to the human condition, this feeling of being stuck or dissatisfied, that change is happening whether we like it or not. To paraphrase songwriter Nick Cave, she transforms, she vibrates, look at her now. Look at it now. She didn't stop; she never will. Death, birth, life goes on, la-di-da, la-di-da, la-la.
Our call: SPREAD IT. I loved The worst person in the world and you probably will too.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Learn more about his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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