‘The Worst Person in the World’ – Review
Sometimes a film comes along that envelops you as an audience member that you find yourself drawn deeply inside its narrative that you stop finding yourself viewing a movie and instead you become part of a truly transformative narrative. The Worst Person in the World is that movie, and this is a feature film’s whose powerful narrative and one of a kind characters will pull you in deeply.
The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie (Renate Reinsve), a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.
Regarded as a leading force in world cinema Joachim Trier brings to his audience the fully-formed and completely inclusive tale of The Worst Person in the World, this is a powerful drama of love, connection and place and audiences will find themselves fully transported into its narrative. Told narratively through a distinctive story structure that includes a prologue, 12 chapters and an epilogue, The Worst Person in the World is unlike any film experience you have witnessed before and it gives a fully 360 view of its central character unlike many modern films can claim to do. Interesting in its concept and structure, it’s an incredibly intimate character study of its central character and audiences will be spellbound with the resulting visual story that is presented to them.
Cast in the central tole is Renate Reinsve as Julie, a complex and fully-formed young woman and Reinsve is an utter sensation in the role. Moving past the point of being a mere actress and becoming a complete representation of Julie, you forget that you are watching a narrative film and instead feel like The Worst Person in the World is some kind of documentary piece. That is the power and commitment of Reinsve’s performance. Flightly, opinionated and both for and against commitment, Reinsve’s Julie is an incredibly unique character and audiences will be mesmerized by her performance.
Made up of a series of different vignettes that reveal the transformation of Julie’s life over four years, The Worst Person in the World is serious and sentimental, drama-filled and dreamlike, radiant and raging, and is a different kind of film experience. For each of the different narrative vignettes, Trier brings different shooting styles and frames of focus and via Reinsve’ performance we see the continual growth and change of Julie’s central character. Julie is a character you love, hate, sympathise with and in the end understand, and I cannot think of a young woman’s journey into a modern world that has been so completely conceived and crafted as it is in this manner. Both Trier and Reinsve bring total trust to each other and this is what powers the story and its meaning and impact on their audience.
The Worst Person in the World is so completely different from anything else I can remember seeing and audiences will be transfixed by its presentation. It’s rare that we see a filmmaker so invested in a single character and who completely wants to showcase a fully 360-degree portrait of both the capabilities and faults of a single character and it’s incredibly refreshing to watch this unfold. What captured my attention was how he took the idea of the romantic comedy and completely subverted the genre to serve his central character, a technique that is untried in more traditional Hollywood cinema and the result is an astounding achievement in film production. The Worst Person in the World is something completely different and unexpected and it fully harnesses your attention as an audience member.
For those who like their film original and different and who are looking for something more meaningful out of the cinema The Worst Person in the World makes for a fascinating watch and the direction of Joachim Trier and the performance of Renate Reinsve is sure to woah you.
Image: MadMen Films
