✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Norway · 2021
2h 8m
Director Joachim Trier
Starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner
Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Julie is a young woman navigating the troubled waters of her romantic life while also struggling to find her career path. Ultimately, she must take a realistic look at who she really is. A modern dramedy about the quest for love and meaning in contemporary Oslo.
Any film that can combine questions of mortality with funny, fully alive scenes of sex, social awkwardness, professional screw-ups and throwaway fun is a rich one. Its brilliant, full-on performance from Reinsve deserves to be celebrated far and wide.
Quick, vibrant, pulsing with all sorts of crossover appeal until a slightly moribund energy takes hold toward the end, Trier’s film is never more fun than when Julie is second-guessing herself and/or trying to keep time from slipping through her fingers.
The film’s opening quirky comedy routines give way to something much richer––a startlingly observant, sharp, romantic, provocative, and poignant view of millennial culture and how life comes at you fast.
In essaying Julie, a character at once watery and opaque, shaped by everything around her but vocally resistant to influence, Reinsve has a tricky assignment that she nails with remarkable fluidity and grace.
Detailing the thrills and fears of turning 30 down to its mundane but absorbing minutiae, Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s fifth feature is a pure delight. Laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking in equal measure, it’s perhaps his best film since “Oslo, August 31st.”
This is a film of unfolding delights, providing a terrific canvas for the actors.
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
More than ever, Trier reveals how well he can keep shifting tones and emotional arcs without losing any narrative momentum.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Trier has taken on one of the most difficult genres imaginable, the romantic drama, and combined it with another very tricky style – the coming-of-ager – to craft something gloriously sweet and beguiling.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
The film’s focus may be tight – just a few tangled, formative years – but it encompasses so much.
A chaotic, unpredictable portrait of a chaotic, unpredictable individual, The Worst Person In The World is a spirited and thrillingly uninhibited piece of filmmaking from Joachim Trier.
A German film adaptation of the epic 1929 anti-war novel by Erich Maria Remarque.
She’s everything. He’s just Ken.
A couple encounters shocking surprises at an exclusive island restaurant.
In Montana, in 1925, a rancher responds with cruelty when his brother brings home a new wife and her son.
Spider-Man faces a crisis from across the multiverse.
A viking prince returns home after years of training in order to take revenge on his uncle.
The life of the young poet Lucien de Rubempre, who leaves Angouleme for Paris to become an author.
A car ride across Japan leads to an unlikely connection between a widowed stage director and his introverted young driver.
Two single mothers give birth at the same time in the same place, and their chance connection will change their lives forever.
A young boy grows up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the late 1960s.
This movie captures so many complex emotions so well. Julie is a very well-developed and realistic character, and Trier chooses great scenes and moments to provide insight into her struggles and indecision. I also liked how her romantic life was portrayed in a nuanced way, and how the movie stays focused on her self-discovery throughout.
What makes this film genuinely great is how none of the life-altering, awful decisions that Julie makes feel life-altering in the moment. Sometimes, they don’t even feel like the worst decisions she could make. That's because nothing in this film feels black and white. Julie often follows the direction that feels the most fulfilling in the moment, but not the most logical, seemingly implying that this is what life is about — not living for the future or for the past, but simply doing what you need to do in the present moment.
A fantastic deconstruction and examination of the flawed and romanticized concepts of soulmates and 'the love of one's life'. The Worst Person in the World has amazing, well rounded characters that feel like real people, and through this great characterization it is able to comment on the reality of relationships, that no one is 'perfect' for each other, and that commitment takes work.