↑ Holy smokes: Herbert Nordrum and Renate Reinsve

MOVIES

THE WORST PERSON

ness to start a family feels like a
Rubicon she’s nowhere near
crossing. Enter Eivind (Herbert
Nordrum), an alluring stranger

IN THE WORLD
she meets at a party in a sequence
so perfectly choreographed it
somehow manages to mimic the
actual serotonin rush of falling
for someone in real time.
S TA R R I N G R E N AT E R E I N S V E , A N D E R S DA N I E L S E N L I E ,
Or maybe that’s just how they There’s a playfulness to Trier’s
H E R B E RT N O R D R U M do it in Norway. Director Joachim filmmaking—the storybook chap-
Trier (Thelma) first cast actress ters and wry voice-overs, a bravura
D I R E C T E D BY J OAC H I M T R I E R
Renate Reinsve in his 2011 art- segment in which love literally
R AT I N G + T I M E R; 2 HRS., 7 MINS. house hit Oslo, August 31st, and puts the entire universe on pause—
R EV I EW BY L E A H G R E E N B L AT T then took nearly a decade to that lends the movie a kind of
create a showcase role for her. The dizzying effervescence. But a steady
When’s the last time a romantic comedy result is Julie, a magnificent mess melancholy runs through it as
made you feel anything at all? In its long who drinks and smokes and well, chemtrails of old wounds and
downward slide, the genre hasn’t died so much changes her career plans—doctor, lost causes, and a pivot toward real
as zombified; a tired pile of old tropes and fairy writer, photographer—as often heartbreak in the second half res-
tales played out by pretty blanks who fight and flirt as her hair. In other words she’s onates in a way that stories like
and invariably make it work by the third act. Per- in her 20s, but when her dating this rarely even attempt to reach
haps that’s why The Worst Person in the World has roundelay lands on a rangy under- for. A lot of that credit naturally
been greeted so rapturously, landing on multiple ground comic-book artist named belongs to the writer-director,
critics’ lists following a triumphant festival run this Aksel (great Trier regular Anders and a near note-perfect cast. It’s
past year. Worst has no shortage of gorgeous- Danielsen Lie), she’s charmed by Reinsve, though, who holds the
people problems—more than enough, in fact, to fill his older-man ease and his cer- whole thing in her hands, flipping
12 cinematic “chapters”—but it vibrates with real tainty of how they’re meant to be. the role of muse and ingenue so
OSLO PICTURES

life, a film so fresh and untethered to rom-com Happy domesticity is something deftly and sweetly that she feels,
cliché it might actually reshape the idea of what childhood never really modeled for these two hours at least, like
movies like this can be. for her though, and Aksel’s eager- the only person in the world. A

100 MARCH 2022 EW. C O M

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