The third entry in Joachim Trier’s “Oslo trilogy”, following Reprise and Oslo, August 31st, is arguably his greatest. Playing out over 12 chapters with a prologue and epilogue, The Worst Person in the World is an incisive, funny and disarmingly self-aware story about not knowing what to with yourself as the “formative years” pass.
Renate Reinsve plays Julie, a restless young millennial approaching 30, who is figuring out what do to with her life and with whom she wants to spend it. This all may sound like an overly familiar coming-of-age romcom about a quarter-life crisis but the end result is something truly singular: Trier injects some visually ingenious and at times beautifully surreal sequences into quotidian moments, delivering a devastatingly relatable tale of how human it is to stumble and how people collide into each other at the right and wrong times in their lives.
Reinsve is spellbinding in the role, a performance which won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes last year. She is the beating heart of this intoxicatingly romantic whirlwind, which seems to reassure us that the roads we choose to take and avoid in the name of uncertainty are all worthwhile, for bittersweet and best, as long as we make a choice. Good luck getting Art Garfunkel’s ‘Waters of March’ out of your head once the credits roll. ★★★★★
- Starts June 2 D: Joachim Trier (Norway, 2021), with Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie.
