The Worst Person in the World begins with a prologue for Julie (a tremendous Renate Reinsve), a woman in her late 20s who is having difficulty choosing what path her life should go down. She begins as a medical student, but then decides she should try out psychology, then quickly moves on to photography. The narration states that Julie is disappointed in herself, that this used to all be so easy. Her boyfriend Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) tells her “you seem to be waiting for something, I don’t know what.”

Julie isn’t indecisive per se, she just knows that the choices she makes in this period will define the rest of her life, that her choices in love/work/life will trickle down from here on out. At this point, her ancestors had lived seemingly full lives, while Julie is still struggling to figure out her own. This fear of the future, this worry about making the wrong choice, how the choices we made define us, and how beautifully director/co-writer Joachim Trier melds all these ideas together is what makes The Worst Person in the World not just one of the best films of 2021, but possibly one of the best coming-of-age films ever made.

Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt tell Julie’s story in twelve chapters, in addition to a prologue and epilogue. This choice allows us to see the key moments in Julie’s life, the moments that helped create who she is and will become. Some of these sequences are understandably impactful, as when Julie’s father chooses not to come to her 30th birthday party, while others seem minor at the time, but will have surprising importance in her life as time goes by.

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Image via Sundance

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Trier’s choice to not just focus on the major moments of a person’s life, but the moments that we can’t foresee as being vastly important to our existence makes The Worst Person in the World subtly brilliant. There are choices that Julie seems to make at the spur of the moment, others that she painstakingly considers for years, but both are equally essential to making Julie into the person she needs to become. Life can change in a split second, and The Worst Person in the World makes it clear that while making major life decisions is important, there’s an entire swath of unexpected moments and choices that will irrevocably change who we are, and these can come at any time.

Reinsve, who won Best Actress at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, is an absolute joy to watch on this adventure through her own life. Every new chapter in her life and in this film offers Reinsve a new way to explore Julie, whether it’s in showing the differences between two potential loves, or the excitement of discovering something new about herself. This is a film that asks Reinsve to present the most vulnerable, meaningful, heartbreaking, and powerful moments of a person’s life, and no matter what the challenge that arises from Trier and Vogt’s Oscar-nominated screenplay, Reinsve is up for it.

Essential to Julie’s story are the two men that she meets in this journey of self-discovery. Lie’s Aksel is a comic book writer who is older than Julie, who has some insight into what she’s going through, but often seems like he’s just as confused as her. He already has to reckon with his problematic early comic that still defines his artistic career, yet he seems more able to go with the flow than someone like Julie. Also important to Julie’s story is Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), a barista who Julie meets at a party, and the two seem to form an immediate bond. Not only are Trier and Vogt presenting this story with a love triangle, but also a very direct look at how the decisions that a person makes can completely alter their lives significantly. Both Lie and Nordrum are fantastic here, as Lie presents the safer, easier choice to be made, while Nordrum is the potential new path that Julie really has to go down, lest she consider what could’ve been for the rest of her life.

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Trier tells this story in breathtaking and inventive ways that are quirky, yet never twee. At one point, the world around Julie completely stops with the flick of a light switch, allowing her to explore her deepest desire. In another scene, Julie goes on a hallucinatory discovery of her fears and wants. These filmmaking flairs are never showy, but rather, are simply the best way to present Julie’s mindset at any given time. In a film about finding what one wants in life, Trier breathes new life into this film in exciting and powerful ways. Yet even at its simplest, when Trier is showing a party gone wrong or an awkward encounter in a bookstore, Trier and cinematographer Kasper Tuxen (Beginners, Riders of Justice) shoots every scene with beauty and love.

The Worst Person in the World is a near-perfect, energetic, and genuinely moving tale of finding yourself in your thirties, how the definition of success has changed over the years, making decisions that inform the rest of your life, and how there are certain moments that once we lose the person those moments are shared with are simply gone forever. By focusing on these chapters that shift the direction of Julie’s life, we see how the big moments and the banal moments can be equally important. Trier has crafted a film that is not just about living life to the fullest while you can, but about how terrifying fully embracing life can be because of the options that will close along the path. The Worst Person in the World, quite simply, is the type of film that could completely impact the way the viewer sees the world, a phenomenal statement on life, love, and growing into yourself.

Rating: A+

The Worst Person in the World is now playing in theaters.