Danish-Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World dials back the director’s penchant for intense melodrama to focus on the quieter torment of the endless struggle to assert some sense of direction onto the directionlessness of life. We meet protagonist Julie (Renate Reinsve) as a medical student with top grades who is suddenly possessed of a restlessness about her life’s path when, in perilously relatable fashion, she spends too much time doomscrolling social media and news feeds. Worrying that she only went into medicine out of misplaced “gifted kid” anxiety about needing to be in milieux where she can keep getting validated by test scores, Julie suffers an early-life crisis that causes her to switch majors and dump her boyfriend, actions that are amusingly set to a retro rock song to mimic an ‘80s self-improvement montage. The first indication that she may have made a misstep, however, occurs when this brief breakdown starts with her in cavernous medical school auditoriums and ends with her humbly entering a small, sparsely attended psychology classroom.
This abrupt upheaval is the first in a string of rash, chaotic choices that Julie makes over the course of the film, which follows several years in the young woman’s life as she searches for the right combination of career and romance choices that will click into place as the “correct” life. The film’s title humorously refers to Julie’s penchant for making rash decisions that evince a disregard for how her sudden life changes might affect others. She breaks off a long-term relationship with older comic-book artist Aksel (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie), for example, on a whim in order to chase the possibility of love with Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), a now-married barista with whom she once shared a chaste but romantic evening.
And yet, the film repeatedly makes clear that Julie’s actions are not purely selfish but rather a logical progression of choices that, however spontaneous, reflect a broader fear of getting well into legal adulthood and still feeling like a child with no idea how to obtain the happiness that seems to come easily to others. An early scene sees Julie go to Aksel’s parents’ house for a weekend where she is surrounded by some of his siblings’ friends who are not that much older than her but all outwardly have their lives together in ways unfathomable to her. Trier lets each conversation Julie has with these people draw out just a bit too long, all the better to focus on the increasing anxiety that ripples across the woman’s face as she clearly feels immature and half-formed compared to the rest of them. (Later in the film, Julie hangs out with some friends her own age, and they are all hilariously gripped by the same terror of stagnation, opting to do drugs in a futile attempt to stave off their fear of existence.)
Reinsve captures this relatable sense of underdevelopment in subtle tones, avoiding demonstrative explosions of embarrassment or agony over her feelings of uncertainty. Instead, her naturalistic performance communicates another pending left turn in Julie’s life with little more than a twitch of the mouth or a slight flaring of the nostrils as she spots, say, a camera that tips a domino toward making her shift career interests toward photography. In particular, she masters Julie’s ability to always sound bold and full of conviction while betraying the slight caged animal way she takes in the world around her and looks around for whatever escape route will get her out of any feeling of self-doubt.
For the most part, Trier gets out of the actress’ way, using gentle handheld shots to reflect her nervous energy while giving her enough space to let her minor jitters communicate Julie’s underlying tension. Still, there are a number of writerly and directorial flourishes that make this more than a laidback portrayal of millennial angst. Trier’s division of the film into chapters gives shape to Julie’s seemingly random decisions while also allowing each new disruption to stand apart as its own story. The early scenes sprint forward with rack focus shots and rapid-fire editing that make light of how quickly Julie runs through relationships and career paths, while later ones adjust slightly to emphasize certain details. The meeting between Julie and Eivind can be as absurd as romantic (one moment involves each using the toilet in front of the other specifically to make their interaction as unsexy as possible), but Trier nonetheless attunes this section to the gentle rapport that builds between the two, and how their mutual attempts to downplay their chemistry to remain faithful to their partners only magnifies their connection. Elsewhere, the specter of a loved one’s terminal illness is filmed with underlit, gray colors and stark, aesthetic compositions. As graceful and underplayed as Reinsve’s performance, Trier’s additions add emphasis to the character’s emotional state without overpowering the story for the sake of showing off.
Taken as a whole, The Worst Person in the World perhaps features just as much drama as Trier’s earlier, more explosive work. But by consistently underplaying the tumultuousness of all that happens to and because of Julie, the film diverts from melodrama into something far more relatable. It is a shame that so much coming-of-age art is focused on one’s teenage years, a time in which people tend to go through the same stories of budding sexuality, hormonal imbalance and apprehension about entering adulthood. Far less plundered, yet more narratively rewarding, are stories about those who have reached their adult years only to realize that there are no more answers than there were in adolescence. Trier’s film is a tribute to the classic John Lennon quote “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” and as frustrating as Julie can be, it is impossible to hate her for her impulsiveness when we’re all in ways dramatic and not doing the same thing: juggling desires and fears of having kids, facing the horror of getting trapped in unfulfilling work, never knowing if even the closest relationship will last. It’s easy to say that the film makes such an impression because it speaks to these universal anxieties, but it’s the subtle manner in which every element of direction and acting highlights these fears that makes this one of the all-time great movies about growing up well after society thinks that you already should have.
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