What’s wrong with you?
Do you notice how often you ask yourself that? Prompted by something not going your way, or another exhaustive comparison to other people, or when you catch yourself not enjoying something that you should. And when you can’t find a way to articulate or diagnose what will make you happier, do you think of your negative emotions as some kind of fault in yourself? That your loneliness, burn-out, or general societal dissatisfaction is due to your inadequacies? Joachim Trier, the Norwegian filmmaker behind Thelma and Oslo, August 31st, knows you’ve experienced these feelings, and with his new romantic drama, he seeks to permit you a little joy.
The Worst Person in the World is a film seemingly titled by its own self-critical protagonist. We meet Julie (Renate Reinsve) as she whizzes through a whirlwind of life choices at university and beyond, before the film takes a breath in a settled, and supposedly content, relationship with an older cartoonist, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie). What follows are 12 chapters of passion, discontent, and jumpsuits as Julie searches for fulfillment, mostly posed through the unfair framework of, “what am I doing wrong?”
With different people, Julie sees Oslo with fresh eyes, whether it’s the contradictorily intellectual and puerile Aksel, or the 6-foot-plus charisma machine Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). But as she clumsily waltzes into her 30s, Julie is starkly reminded of how people from our past will never truly leave us, and struggles to figure out a balance of leaning on other people and standing tall by herself.
Worst Person is a bewitching and enchanting film. While the “young person finding themselves” rom-com genre has become saturated by an onslaught of Netflix Originals, Trier’s attention to filmmaking craft and vibrantly directed performances elevates his film to ecstatic heights. Multiple times, Trier indulges in narrative and stylistic indulgences just to show the intensity of someone’s epiphany or the potency of two people’s attraction, and it’s executed with such swelling emotion and delicate grace that you’ll be pining for similar experiences yourself. Worst Person’s dramatic content may not be revolutionary, or even completely unfamiliar, but it’s all driven by compelling rushes of feeling. Plus, Trier is attuned to the genre expectations so well that he’s able to pointedly steer away from the stereotypes of a lesser narrative.
In the blistering performance of Reinsve (the deserved winner of Best Actress at this year’s Cannes), we’re seamlessly whisked through Julie’s oscillating emotional states. In her partners’ words and reactions, we watch seeds of discontent grow across her face, her mood fluctuating at their slightest faux pas. Sometimes, they haven’t even done anything grievous to upset her; by admitting the audience into the complex interior world that motivates her every decision, we know the true pain behind her taking out her dissatisfaction on those who can’t understand what she’s thinking and feeling. They’re not always blameless though, the film nails the indulgent and loaded way male creatives will aggrandise their own art and condescendingly assess a woman’s writing.
The relatability of Worst Person goes without saying, as we’re given a succession of snapshot glances into shared experiences. We recognise when a fight turns into sex, when Julie picks a semi-secluded area to cry at work, at a job she thought would last a year but stretches on into a dull eternity. It’s heartbreaking seeing Julie assign blame on herself when disappointments pile up; when her dad doesn’t read an article on her, or when she thinks a change in her body is due to her carelessness. You want to reach out and shake her, telling her she’s worthy of all the love in the world, but you realise it’ll be so much more satisfying when she realises that herself.
Dissatisfaction litters the film, a smothering blanket that Julie tries to pierce throughout. When her current loves prove inadequate, she finds herself dreaming of brighter pastures; but what the script gets right is that wanting to break up is rarely about someone else, but rather the appealing everything of other people. There could be something brilliant, something glimmering elsewhere if we’re courageous enough to search for it. It’s a film about chasing joy and figuring out our relationship to it, so joy needs to be present in every frame for the audience, and it is; fleeting, lasting, sexy, wholesome, every shade and concentration.
As the uncomfortable realisation sets in, that we always bring along those we used to love, we join Julie in the confusion of how much we’ve let ourselves be defined by other people. And while the film understands this is a problem, it also posits that, as we change from day to day, other people are the way all our past versions stay alive. Don’t let other people decide who you are, but admit them into your interior world and live through them; it’s a taut emotional tightline we walk in order to find happiness. The Worst Person in the World confidently walks that line, its arms outstretched and unafraid to wobble as it goes, and every time we wince in fear of it falling, it laughs, loving how it makes us feel.
