Throughout Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s humanist, candid and melancholy Oslo-set romantic drama, “The Worst Person in the World,” you may find yourself wondering who the titular character might be. Is it Julia (Renata Reinsve), the indecisive, impulsive, entrancing heroine at the center of the story? Is it Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), Julia’s older boyfriend, a brilliant, edgy comic book artist? Is it the sweetly submissive Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) one of Julia’s other suitors? The truth is that none of them are “the worst” even if they may, at times, feel that way; indeed it’s their fumbling, failing, flailing attempts to run towards happiness that make them so relatable, and ultimately, lovable. “The Worst Person in the World” is incredibly good company, as it turns out.
Reinsve’s performance as the luminous, yet challenging Julia, who learns to live and love in her own way, earned her the Best Actress prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Written by Trier and longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, the film declares from the outset that it will be told in, “12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue,” which offers a kind of comforting shape and guide to the story. The prologue plunges the viewer into Julia’s world in a swift montage of her youthful exploits, and as Chapter One begins, she’s already shacked up with Aksel, and the themes that will dictate their relationship, specifically their creative work and the decision to have children, are set in place.
Aksel, a successful artist and writer, wants kids, while Julia wants what Aksel has, a career, a purpose. She dabbles in photography and writing while working a low-wage job in a bookstore, but her constant search to fill the unknown void within sparks a desire for rebellion, which she indulges with some light wedding crashing, where she meets, and flirts with, Eivind.
