The Worst Person in the World

The Worst Person in the World carries a shimmery feeling of definitiveness to it. It’s the rare piece of art actually invested in why an entire generation can seem so aimless and indecisive. We’re far too content to simply revel in the chaos of it, but Trier – a filmmaker of inexhaustible empathy – seeks something more. Julie is a modern-day Goldilocks, dunking her spoon into an endless line of porridge bowls. She goes to medical school. Then she decides to specialise in psychiatry. Then she ditches the whole thing for photography (“actually she was a visual person”, the narration notes).

She jumps into a relationship with an older man, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), who’s known for a series of Fritz the Cat-like graphic novels about an unrepentantly horny anthropomorphic bobcat. He wants kids now. She doesn’t. “You seem to be waiting for something. I don’t know what,” he tells her spitefully in return. When she flees into the arms of a mellow-minded bartender, Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), who has no particular plans for his future, it ends up just as unsatisfactory. Trier has divided his story into 12 chapters, bookended by a prologue and epilogue – a conceit that crashes the viewer headlong into Julie’s life. She’s 29. Suddenly she’s 30. Her hair is blonde, then pink, then brown.