Courtship and dating has changed a lot in the last 100 years. Once humanity’s survival is off the table, then religious/moral reasons took precedent. But with the decline of religious influence on the populous, it feels like a good time to look at how relationships work today with fewer societal obligations. Enter The Worst Person in the World: a master class in what relationships/growing up in modern society looks like: featuring a new minefield of relationship deal breakers and terminology, and what role love has to play in one’s life.
The Worst Person in the World is apparently Julie (an incredible Renate Reinsve). On the surface, you wonder why: she’s a fun, hyper impulsive girl in her late 20s who’s been jumping career to career, recently landing on photography. On this career journey, she’s also dating around, eventually finding a strong connection with 44 year old Askel (Anders Danielsen Lie), an underground comic/writer. The age gap puts the pair in constant friction, as Askel wants to maybe have some kids, but Julie is more hesitant. This friction causes Julie’s attention to wander, eventually lasering in on a party where she meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), someone more her age that she also has a connection with.
Told in chapters, Writer/director Joachim Trier completely captures Julie’s life as a modern woman. Not bound by any societal codes, Julie is free to live the life she chooses, which is both intoxicating and terrifying. Unlimited options clang wildly with her relationships, which are about compromise and a transition from a life of 1 to a life of 2. Julie often speaks of “something” that prevents her from wanting to settle down and have kids with Askel: she can’t totally describe it, but anyone who wants more out of their own life will know what she’s talking about. And, as an extremely complex, impulsive person, Askel never can quite understand the whole picture of Julie, leading her go search for a connection the opposite of the rigid 44 year old: Eivind, a supportive but simple man letting Julie live her life as she pleases. And maybe this is what the title means: you’d think the opposite person would make Julie happy if Askel was making her sad, but Askel taps into Julie’s intellectuality in a way that Eivind can’t, causing a new type of friction with Julie’s new love. The love and relationship Julie is most interested in is the one about herself, as she learns more aspects of her personality and what truly makes her happy, Askel, or Eivind, or no man at all, and seems totally dependent on an ever changing series of situations. That’s deep, hyper complex stuff, but thanks to Renate Reinsve’s amazing performance, speaking or not, we feel exactly what Julie’s feeling as she figures out how to live the life she wants.
If you read the Wikipedia version of The Worst Person in the World, it’s a lot of lines like “someone reads Julie’s story, Julie is excited/sad at their reaction” which sounds, just, incredibly boring. But such is the brilliance of Joachim Trier, who takes that lame description and makes it come alive through his (and Eskil Vogt’s) screenplay and direction. There’s tons of humor here, with Julie and Askel commenting on the goings on of the facade of Askel’s “perfect” family, an amazing party crashing leading to “not cheating,” and an incredible drug tripping sequence. On top of the droll, Trier is a wonderful student of human behavior, capturing with his lens or his laptop keys how people are feeling. Directing wise, Trier is equally good with the big moments and little ones. On the big end, you have this brilliant sequence where it looks like the world stops/stands still while Julie goes for an amazing, happy day of new experiences, requiring lots of extras standing still while she runs through the streets. And then there’s these equally brilliant small moments, like when Julie catches a family member in a lie, and chooses to bury her hurt instead of making the problem worse by calling them out, with the surface chat masking the real feelings brilliantly.
Wow, has modern life/relationships gotten complex. The Worst Person in the World wonderfully explores that complexity, through all the words and all the feelings. Plus, I’m now very interested in the underground Norwegian comics scene, and their obsession with animal butts. Not to mention their version of anime erotica. What a fascinating place.