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The Worst Person in the World Movie Review

The Worst Person in the World is a 2021 Norwegian romantic drama film directed by Joachim Trier and starring Renate Reinsve. It’s one of the year’s best foreign features.

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“What are you waiting for“

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A young woman battles indecisiveness as she traverses the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path. This is a very relevant movie to the newer generations of today. These young people are lost in this modern world with too many options, so it is always difficult for them to find themselves in love and life. This film focuses squarely on the romantic struggles that young people may face while also focusing on the indecisiveness that is at the core of their being.

Julie is an instantly iconic protagonist in a romantic drama. She is superbly developed to the point that she seemed not only real, but again a perfect stand-in for many young women today. The film cleverly empathizes with her to a degree, not as much criticizing her as it is bemoaning her. This is a woman who would lose everything due to her inability to settle and the many choices that she makes throughout this movie are certainly inexcusable, but the film smartly showcases just how difficult it is for inexperienced, immature young people to really settle in.

Renate Reinsve delivered one of the best acting performances of this year. It’s a shame that the Academy always fails to recognize the international talents going into the Oscar race, but this performance is worthy of a nomination at least and maybe even a win. She confidently powers through this movie, carrying most of it on her capable shoulders.

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There is this one scene where she just strolls around Oslo not knowing what to do. That failure to decide what to do with her life results in so many heartbreaking emotions that Reinsve pulled off stupendously. It’s the most powerful introspective moment in the film.

Another highlight is the magical realist movie that sees the protagonist leave her boyfriend and go with her current crush on this wildly romantic date. Everything and everybody freezes except for the two, deftly symbolizing her wishes for everything to just stop for a moment and make her life choices easier. It’s the deepest and fittingly most cinematic section in this gorgeously shot and constructed movie.

Elvind is very likable and the two do share a fun dynamic, but her true love was obviously Aksel and how she treated him was horrible and this is what made her truly unsympathetic and difficult to relate to. That is my problem with the movie that sometimes it does excuse her behavior a bit too much, but that’s to be expected from a modern movie like this.

The whole cancer storyline in the third act felt somewhat hastily put together. I did find it heartbreaking and some of the speeches that he gives were truly tragic, but it wasn’t really necessary to include this plot point in this movie. It was solidly handled, but I did wish for a more interesting third act.

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The Worst Person in the World isn’t an original movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is authentic in the way it was shot, directed and edited. The film makes use of Oslo beautifully and there are so many cinematic moments to be had in this city as it was portrayed here. The structure with the chapters worked and even the narration wasn’t bothersome to me. The directing from Joachim Trier is outstanding and he made the movie really stand out.