Joachim Trier, 2021 · 128 minutes · MUBI, Prime Video
The title is a provocation and the film earns it. Julie, the protagonist of Joachim Trier’s Oslo trilogy closer, is not actually the worst person in the world — she is something more uncomfortable: a recognizable person, mid-twenties, trying to figure out what she wants and finding that what she wants keeps changing. Renate Reinsve plays her with the specific quality of someone who is fully present and constantly elsewhere at the same time, and she won at Cannes for it, deservingly.
The film is structured in chapters, titled and distinct, which gives it the quality of a novel — or of a life examined in discrete moments rather than continuous narrative. We follow Julie across relationships, careers she picks up and puts down, and the ordinary accumulation of choices that eventually constitute a person. Trier does not judge any of it. Neither should you.
What the film captures, with unusual precision, is the particular ache of being uncertain about your own desires — of wanting something until you have it, and then wanting something else. This is treated not as a character flaw but as a condition, common and largely unexamined in cinema. Trier examines it carefully and without sentimentality.
The supporting performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, as Julie’s older partner Aksel, is some of the best work in the film. The scene in which they have the kind of conversation couples rarely manage in real life — honest and devastating and strangely kind — is worth the whole runtime.
VERDICT — One of the most honest films about being young and uncertain in the last decade. It will find you wherever you are and say something true.
POUR — Something clean and slightly bitter. A Negroni, a dry vermouth on ice, or whatever feels right for the version of yourself you’re in tonight.
MOOD — Reflective. Generous toward yourself. Ready to be a little uncomfortable.
Plan this evening with a Date Night guide: The Bookstore Date.
The kind of film that rewards a second viewing. Find it on Blu-ray.
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