The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Directed by Joachim Trier
The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.
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23 films that influenced The Worst Person in the World
What critics say influenced The Worst Person in the World
Such were my thoughts on first watching and wondering about The Worst Person in the World , the third film in Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s so-called Oslo trilogy, which also includes the literary coming-of-age drama Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), about a man’s halting attempt at sobriety.
For his fifth film, The Worst Person in the World , Norway’s Joachim Trier returns to the vibrant energy which graced his forlorn protagonists in Reprise and Oslo, August 31st in a “twelve chapter (plus prologue and epilogue”) odyssey of one young woman’s navigation to self-discovery.
Joachim Trier’s unpredictable romantic dramedy completes the filmmaker’s “Oslo Trilogy” – preceded by Reprise and Oslo, August 31st – with enormous tonal control and even greater emotional depth.
Danielsen Lie also starred in director and co-writer Joachim Trier’s Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011) – also penetrating films about young people finding and losing themselves in Oslo – and Trier has said he considers this a third film in a loose trilogy about his city.
Bringing the same, unsentimental empathy evident in the likes of Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, Trier and regular co-screenwriter Eskil Vogt expertly outline the self-doubt, familial complications, and societal expectations that are also at play in Julie’s life.
Trier has used him in other productions — Reprise and Oslo, August 31st ; two magnificent titles in their own rights.
Though of a piece with Trier’s loosely associated “Oslo Trilogy”— Reprise and Oslo, August 31st are the others, all three starring the superb Anders Danielsen Lie—the film plays like a savvy deconstruction of Annie Hall or similarly literate romantic comedies.
There are opaque shades of Woody Allen’s best work, from Annie Hall to Hannah and Her Sisters .
One of the models here, I suspect, is “Annie Hall” (1977), which Trier placed at No. 3 in his roster of favorite movies, when quizzed by Sight & Sound in 2012.
The same could be said for the story of The Worst Person in the World , which owes as much to Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) as 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) and When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989).
She is a thoroughly modern woman and doesn't need to dress up like Annie Hall.
It is almost a decade since Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha graced our screens and became a cinematic touchstone of existentialism for women in their 20s.
But this isn’t simply the Norwegian “Frances Ha,” which is not at all a dig.
There are shades of Noah Baumbach’s “Frances Ha,” and indeed, Julie’s sprint down central Oslo radiates the same level of euphoria as Greta Gerwig’s run across New York City set to David Bowie.
He’s a 44-year-old underground comix artist (and apparently a big fan of Robert Crumb’s Fritz the Cat ).
Her life begins to take on some stability when she falls in love with fortysomething Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), the creator of a Fritz the Cat -style series of comic books.
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This conception isn’t entirely wrong, of course, but it belies the fact that the oldest members of the cohort are hurtling toward something which looks an awful lot like middle age; I recently realized, with no small amount of horror, that I am now older than most of the characters in The Big Chill.
Julie’s restlessness makes her a love/hate fascination; the film may speak to millennials much like “The Big Chill” did to boomers and “Reality Bites” to Gen-Xers.
Watching The Worst Person in the World , my mind traipsed toward another coming-of-age film: the 1978 Paul Mazursky–helmed classic An Unmarried Woman .
And there are shades of Milan Kundera and Philip Kaufman’s underseen adaptation The Unbearable Lightness of Being .
The closest thing Trier’s movie approaches — and I mean this both in terms of similarity and praise — is Godard’s Breathless .
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There are opaque shades of Woody Allen’s best work, from Annie Hall to Hannah and Her Sisters .
Although shades of 500 Days of Summer (2009), or, more particularly, Take This Waltz (2011) might feel immediately evident, The Worst Person in the World feels more comprehensive, more formidable in its complexities than many contemporaries—it’s a hard won feat to seamlessly capture the difficulty of getting what you thought you wanted only to realize it’s not what you want or need.
Similar to Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz , the narrative sees our heroine possess a lack of clarity with a subtle degree of selfishness but Julie’s struggle is a relatable one: does she want children, should she want them or is she expected to have them?