Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielson Lie, Maria Grazia di Meo, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 127 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Julie is 29, moving from course to course in studies, entering into relationships – and then out of them. Is she the worst person, or can life challenge and change her?
Norway’s nomination for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Renate Reinsve won the award for Best Actress at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and the film has received general acclaim.
It is very much a film for audiences in their 20s, 30s, 40s. Younger audiences will probably not identify with characters and situations. Older audiences will look back, sometimes with regrets, sometimes with irritation at the character of Julie, her life and choices.
Julie is not the worst person in the world. She is certainly not the best person in the world. But, as we go through the situations with her, she could certainly improve. The film is divided into 12 chapters with the prologue and epilogue – and the heading of one of the chapters includes the word narcissistic. Julie is self-absorbed, flits from one occupation to another, plunges headlong into a relationship and tires of it before she explains the reasons for breaking up. She really doesn’t want to marry. She doesn’t want to have children. She is satisfied with coasting along, initially happy in relationships, then, not necessarily unhappy, but distracted into a new relationship.
The setting is the Norwegian capital Oslo, with plenty of views to make the audience feel at home or interested in a visit there.
Julie is supported by her mother, alienated from her father, studying surgery, then on a whim decides on psychology, then in flighty mode selecting photography. She does continue to take photographs but works in a bookstore.
At a social, she is attracted by Aksel (a sympathetic portrayal by Anders Danielson Lie), who creates graphic comics, a disrespectful but cheeky character, Bobcat, who is being adapted for the movies. Aksel not satisfied. In his 40s, he has a desire for children, while Julie is 29 and still freewheeling. The couple do have some intimate moments but not enough to contain Julie’s roving eye, attracted to a young man who serves coffee and a bar, Eivind (Herbert Nordrum). For him the relationship is important. For a time Julie thinks it is but it is really only just a step to the next relationship, her wounding the feelings of both Aksel and Eivind in her seeming carelessness.
The film does express some hope in Julie and her future, most movingly in some final sequences where she goes to meet Aksel in hospital, and is moved by his illness, remembering their past intimacy and has regrets.
But, since Julie is entering her 30s, her life before her, her mistakes behind her, the audience is left to wonder what kind of life she will have. Perhaps not the worst person in the world, but certainly not the best.
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