There is a popular forum on Reddit where users post awkward social scenarios and publicly ask the question, “am I the asshole?” Norweigan director Joachim Trier’s melancholy romantic drama The Worst Person In The World is the closest thing to a movie version of that community.
As the title character, Renate Reinsve plays Julie, a listless young woman living and loving and pouting in Oslo. She is your typical, indecisive, bourgeoisie Millennial dreamed up by a fortysomething male filmmaker. Over the course of twelve dreary chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue, Julie moves in with an older cartoonist, has an affair with a charming barista, does drugs, and mopes. She is conflicted about… everything.
If this were an American movie, there would have been more pop music montages and fewer conversations about death. It turns out the worst person in the world is just an asshole and a self-centered one.