Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Joachim Trier
Screenplay Written by: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Produced by: Thomas Robsahm, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar
Executive Producers: Dyveke Bjøkly Graver, Tom Erik Kjeseth, Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjørneby.
Viewed in Norwegian with English Subtitles
“You need to be completely free.”
Julie (Renate Reinsve) stands smoking in a black cocktail dress with the city in the background.
The Worst Person In the World follows Julie as she figures out life.
She starts off studying to be a surgeon, then psychology then photography.
Moving from one thing to the next, she never quite finishes anything. But she lives and loves.
The film is set out in 12 chapters, with a prologue and epilogue. This is the analytical part of the film and something the character Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) would appreciate. He’s a comic creator that analyses everything.
Julie loves him.
But doesn’t love him.
Aksel tells her, You need to be completely free.’
That’s the first time she realises that she loves him.
Until she meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum).
In an interview with director and screenwriter Joachim Trier, he’s asked to talk, “more about the very literary way the film is broken into chapters?”
“We had this idea early on when writing: to show fragments of a life and that the space between the chapters was as important as what we actually see. This is a coming-of-age film but for grownups who feel like they still haven’t grown up. To find a structure of covering several years in a life, from when Julie is in her mid-twenties to her early thirties, we found the humour of a “literary” framework to help us tell that story. The almost novelistic form also reflects Julie’s longing for a grand literary destiny, almost as if she unconsciously wishes her life to have a literary form.”
I’m trying not to think too deeply about the explanation of, coming-of-age film but for grownups who feel like they still haven’t grown up. I related to this character, Julie, as she tried to figure out what she wants or why she feels the way she does.
But more than relating to the feelings of how to navigate love while remaining independent and free (yes, am still thinking about the film a week later), the way the film’s put together adds to that feeling of running towards what’s right.
That moment when everything else ceases (literally frozen in the film) as Julie runs through the streets to imagine that feeling of being in the right place. And then going for it. It’s hard not to get swept up into it all.
There’s something refreshing about seeing all those silent thoughts shown in a clever way so the film is more than a romance or a drama, there’s a quiet that’s absorbing. Like the silence is there to allow reflection.
Colours are used to introduce the film: yellow and blue to black and are then circled back to later so there’s this sense of completion, like Julie reaches another layer, like it’s that layer she’s been searching for all along.
And the dialogue adds another element, the, ‘Intellectual Viagra,’ comment.
And, ‘She’s just shy.’
‘That’s what you say about boring people.’
Again, silence used when Aksel says, ‘Kids are intense.’
To which Julie replies by taking a large sip of red wine.
It’s a journey that ended up in places unexpected – sexy, clever, sad and poetic.
If you’re not usually a fan of romance, this is one of the good ones.
