Photo: Neon
The Worst Person in the World
Renate Reinsve in The Worst Person in the World
Turning 30 has long been a milestone but getting past that birthday with a sense of satisfaction might be trickier now than in previous generations. That’s one takeaway from the comedy The Worst Person in the World by Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier. Lacking an internal GPS, the protagonist, Julie (Renate Reinsve), is having difficulty navigating her way to the next stage of life.
Julie was an A student who went to med school because “it’s the one place where your grades matter” in a world where mediocrity is the statistical norm. Deciding her interests leaned more toward the soul than the body, she changed majors to psychology. Mindful of all those sexy pictures she took of her lecturer-lover, she switched majors again, to photography (much to the exasperation of her roommate and landlady—her mom).
Now she’s working in a bookshop. “When is life going to begin?” she demands. Meanwhile, there’s always the time-draining distraction of tweets, likes and updates.
For shorthand, one could think of The Worst Person in the World as the film Woody Allen might make if he were 40 years younger, Norwegian and able to assume a woman’s perspective. It’s filled with bright, college-educated people conversing about sex and relationships—and occasionally deeper topics such as the debilitating effects of applying the scientific method to the humanities. Julie has functions to attend and relatives to meet as she cycles through boyfriends. For much of The Worst Person, she’s with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), the 40something author of a once-underground comic book series that is sliding into the mainstream (he furrows his brow but takes the money). “Being young today is difficult—there’s no time to think,” says one of Aksel’s family members.
Some of The Worst Person’s loveliest moments are its loneliest. In one scene, Julie cuts out of the launch party for Aksel’s latest comic book and wanders the night streets of Oslo, past empty street cars and windows opening onto other people’s parties. She slips into a wedding reception and jolts a dull discussion with women her age about feeding babies by inventing a story about a new study showing that cuddling children leads to drug addiction. However dismissive Julie may be, whether or not to want children is among her many unresolved concerns.
The Worst Person in the World is structured in 10 chapters plus prologue and epilogue. Often, applying that literary format to film is a fussy affectation. In The Worst Person, the device helps to thematically organize a life (Chapter 2: Cheating; Chapter 5: Bad Timing) whose narrative is splintered by distraction and a plethora of choices and whose resolution is uncertain. The Worst Person in the World is an entertainingly thoughtful look at contemporary social anxiety. Nothing in the Norwegian setting is incompatible with the conundrums faced elsewhere in the world.
The Worst Person in the World is screening at the Downer Theater.
