The Worst Person in the World is a heart-rending portrait of Julie (Renate Reinsve, pictured), a woman in her late 20s who never finishes what she starts.Courtesy of MK2 Films
The Worst Person in the World
Directed by Joachim Trier
Written by Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
Starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie and Herbert Nordrum
Classification R; 127 minutes
Opens Feb. 11 in select theatres across Canada, including the TIFF Lightbox
Critic’s Pick
The Worst Person in the World might be the best film Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach never got to make. The third instalment in Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s acclaimed Oslo trilogy is a heart-rending portrait of Julie (Renate Reinsve, who won the Best Actress Prize at Cannes last year), a woman in her late 20s who never finishes what she starts.
In this bracing character study, those things include a pregnancy, two very different long-term relationships, and Julie’s repressed desire to be a writer. Trier has an incredible ear for dialogue and can observe the pitiful drama of a millennial breakup like no other.
As Julie’s sense of self falls in and out of focus based on where she’s at with her two beaus (played by Trier mainstay Anders Danielsen Lie and the excellent Herbert Nordrum), The Worst Person in the World becomes a bittersweet rumination on the power of old loves and what we owe to the exes who shaped us into being.
Reinsve, left, and Anders Danielsen Lie in a scene from The Worst Person in the World.Kasper Tuxen/Courtesy of MK2 Films
Special to The Globe and Mail
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