The Worst Person in the World

This film is quite hard to pin down. It presents itself as a comedy but is more of an artsy, slightly detached drama. Julie, in her thirties, is uncertain about what she wants—pretty typical for her age, but she should be figuring it out by now. She goes through life's ups and downs, just like everyone else, but with a bit more thrown in. Sometimes, it's absurdly funny, other times it jumps to emotionally engaging and sad moments. The constant shift in emotions makes the film feel inconsistent. In the end, it's just as I said: hard to grasp and emotionally all over the place — a bit unusual for Scandinavian cinema. (11/02/2023)

The relationship between the distracted Julie and the internally balanced Aksel reflects all possible problems and vices of the contemporary world, with which we are willingly rushing to meet our doom. I find it quite strange that during the free fall, happy moments flash by, moments that have the power to pull the viewer into joyful euphoria. And that's exactly what happened to me a couple of times while watching the movie. (85%) (04/17/2023)

Considering how Aerofilms is cramming this film through every orifice (I've seen its trailer a good fifteen times) and is clearly trying to patch up two years of COVID losses with it, I automatically went to see it already in an oppositional mindset. And thus began our fantastic mutual war that lasted until the very end. One of my first attacks was the accusation that it’s all well and good to build up an independent and idiosyncratic heroine when the film assigns her to such an idiotic and one-dimensional male character. Except that when it lets the characters talk about something other than relationships for a while, suddenly they're not so dumb and they actually drop some pretty interesting details. But what if these passages too are describing some classic male cliché, which I don't realize because I AM the cliché? And then there were those moments when I resisted jumping in on any of the suggested topics because I feared I was walking into a trap. A couple of times this proved justified, and yet I still occasionally fell for the traditional audience feel-good cliché "She's literally me!" (definitely in the scene where the heroine wanders around town, squeezing herself into someone else's party, where she’s advising others "from a medical position" on how to raise their children with two semesters of medicine under her belt), only to laugh at the film afterwards about how it has to help itself with a cancer plot. But that is suddenly the strongest passage, with a real palpable presence of finality, and it made me think of Verhoeven's Turkish Delight. By the end of the battle, I had almost acknowledged my full surrender before the film finally couldn't help itself and had to demonstrate that theme of female independence through the dilemma of having/not having a child and I was terribly annoyed by the last shot because who the fuck puts a monitor right next to the stove?! So the win goes to Trier, however in boardgame terms he didn't make it to Major Victory in the end but only to Minor. But I worked up a sweat. (03/21/2022)

So, what did I just watch? A romance or more of a psychological portrait of the main character? Probably a mix of both, but the truth is, after the first fifteen minutes, I was tempted to call it quits because I found myself somewhat bored. However, I stuck with it, and to my surprise, the film remained watchable despite its consistently slow pace. It didn't blow me away, but it wasn't dumb either, and I can comfortably agree with many of the ideas it presented. The overly drawn-out runtime is a major drawback, though, so I'll settle on a generous three stars. / Lesson learned: Take a moment to think before you judge someone. (05/15/2022)