“The Worst Person In The World” -- Movie Review

 

On the opening weekend of The 59^th New York Film Festival, I attended the U.S. Premiere of the new Norwegian comedy-drama, “The Worst Person In The World”. 

Synopsis

When a young woman abandons a promising career in order to focus on her personal life, will she find happiness in either?

Story

In Oslo, Julie, who is approaching her 30^th birthday, is attending medical school.  Although she aspires to be a physician, she doesn’t really seem to have much enthusiasm for the profession.  Seeing her interest wane over time, she decides to drop out and pursue other things that hold her attention – such as photography.  Julie takes a job at a bookstore in order to support herself while she studies photography – but there are other pressing matters in her life as well.  The time it took to attend classes and study in medical school didn’t afford her much of an opportunity to have a satisfying love life.  This also needs to be fixed. 

Julie, it turns out, has no problem meeting men.  The problem is meeting the right man.  She gets to know quite a few – some of them are either one-nighters, others brief flings, but rarely anyone with whom she feels a strong connection.  One night, while she is dating another man, she meets Aksel, a successful cartoonist; he has a series of comic books where the protagonist is a politically incorrect bobcat – stories that are very popular with young men.  Although Aksel and Julie develop a relationship, both are acutely aware of the possible impediment of their age difference:  he is in his mid-forties and she in her late-twenties. 

Eventually, when Aksel has to focus on his various career opportunities, Julie attends a party by herself, where she meets Eivind, a more age-appropriate man.  The two hit it off immediately and spend the remainder of the evening talking to each other and ignoring the other guests.  Nothing immediately comes of this since both are currently in a committed relationship.  Later on, the two accidentally run into each other at the bookstore where she works and they wind up realizing they need to be together.  Julie has a difficult conversation with Aksel and she leaves him for Eivind – but after living with Eivind, she suddenly learns she’s pregnant.  Is Julie ready to be a mother at this point?  

Review

“The Worst Person In The World” is told in twelve chapters (plus a prologue and epilogue).  It is entertaining and mostly amusing, until taking a somewhat dark turn in the last few chapters.  One of the nicer surprises is that the movie has an excellent soundtrack, not the least of which being Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bittersweet “Waters Of March” (“Aguas de Marco”).  The screenplay is well-crafted and the directing choices enhance the telling of the story (especially true in the scene where the friends experiment with hallucinogenics as well as a judicious use of some animation).

On balance, “The Worst Person In The World” is highly recommended, but not without one major caveat – and that being of a technical nature.  In the print that was shown during this screening, the subtitles were extremely problematic.  In some cases, the subtitles flashed on the screen so quickly that they could not be read (a speed-reading course would have been a useful prerequisite here).  Also, in other cases, there were subtitles that overlapped other subtitles to the point that neither could be read.  Of all the foreign films reviewed on this web site, this was one of the most dispiriting exercise in reading subtitles experienced in quite a long time.         

Following the screening, there was a very entertaining question and answer session with the director Joachim Trier and cast members Renate Reinsve (Julie) and Anders Danielsen Lie (Aksel).  When Trier gave his screenplay to actors to read, the feedback he received was that it seemed like part of a trilogy; this was not a response he expected because he didn’t conceive of it in that way.  Trier said he wrote the script for Renate, with whom he worked previously, but had a very small role in one of his films.  Reinsve felt that despite the fact that it was written by two men, it accurately portrayed how a woman would behave.  Lie said that he is a part-time actor; he is trained as a physician and worked in that capacity during the height of the Covid crisis when acting jobs were unavailable.