The Worst Person in the World is an instant movie classic to cherish

‘I feel like I never finish anything,’ says Julie (Renate Reinsve) in The Worst Person in the World, a surefire film about the doubts of a twenty-something. Julie energetically starts studying medicine, drops out and switches to psychology, only to stop there after a while. She just doesn’t know where her heart is. Or with whom.

Superficially told The Worst Person in the World a story about a spoiled millennial: there is so much to choose from for Julie that she can no longer see the wood for the trees. But with that description you do the film by the talented Norwegian Joachim Trier (47) seriously short.

Since his beautiful, sensitive feature debut, Trier has been reprise (2006), about two friends with literary ambitions, a specialist in the painful process of coming of age. Every turn in life has something grim, Trier shows, because there is no turning back. Sooner or later comes the realization that time is rumbling on at an alarmingly fast pace towards, well, the exit.

The Worst Person in the WorldNominated for two Oscars (for Best International Picture and Best Screenplay) on Tuesday, , is as much about a growing awareness of mortality as it is about career choices and love agony. The melancholy undertone gives the film a soul. What begins as a witty, mildly ironic portrait of the fluttering Julie, eventually becomes an essential search for the pivotal points of existence. Because which moments are really decisive? Do you only find out afterwards, or can it be foreseen?

It’s all about timing in the intelligent screenplay by Trier and his regular co-writer Eskil Vogt. For example, Julie meets the cartoonist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), whom she falls in love with, too early: she is not yet thirty, he is already in his forties, they are not in sync. In a beautiful scene, Julie stops time with a light switch so she can try out if it is more fun with another boy.

Of reprise and the impressive drama Oslo, August 31st (2011), in which a man in his thirties seeks a way forward after his stay in an addiction clinic, forms The Worst Person in the World loosely a trilogy. The storylines do not touch, but all three films are a portrait of a generation. And of a city, because Trier also explores the heartbeat of prosperous Oslo, which offers its inhabitants so many opportunities.

That Julie nevertheless makes a mess of it is completely understandable, like every character in The Worst Person in the World concept harvest. This is due to the strong acting of all the actors (Reinsve was rightly awarded for it in Cannes), but also to the empathy of Trier, which proves that you don’t always have to choose a side. Not with relationship problems and not with social issues.

Nuanced, moving and infectiously romantic, the film is an instant classic to cherish.