I feel like a spectator in my own life

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2022

#30 : Verdens Verste Menneske (The Worst Person In The World)

Thelma director Joachim Trier comes up with an unexpectedly moving drama about a twentysomething woman (played by Renate Reinsve in a star-making performance) as she navigates relationships and jobs at a tricky period in life.

I've heard lots about this one and know everyone thinks it's great - it was on my list of films to watch, but I'd never got round to it.  And I think this is our first Norwegian film and it's our fifth foreign language film in a row (making it nine of the last ten) - and I'm looking forward to it!

The film centres around Julia (Renate Reinsve) as we follow her for some years of her life, during which, I think it's fair to say, she's not entirely sure what she wants from it.  Two characters who also feature heavily are Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) - and I'm not going to go into any more detail than that, because you're better off coming to it fresh.

The three main characters all feel very natural - they seem like real people with real problems, real relationships, real insecurities and real reactions to them all.  It's also good that they all do things which don't cast them in the best light - it's fair to say they're all flawed, but interestingly (and not extravagantly) so.  Yes, it's not realistic that they experience quite so much change (or that they live in nice flats whilst not obviously earning much money!), but you've got to allow for artistic licence in these things, haven't you?  All the critics agreed that Renate is the star of the show and she really is - it's an absolute barnstorming performance and you really feel the positive and negative emotions battling within her (she won the Best Actress at Cannes).  Anders and Herbert (there's not enough actors called Herbert) support her well, sharing plenty of head-to-head scenes with Renate and very much holding their own.

As well as the fine acting, I also need to call out the writing - the film changes in tone considerably throughout, with it ending up in a much darker place than it started at (but not excessively so) and the changes are handled well.  It also manages a couple of surprise endings - neither of which I saw coming (although I wasn't convinced by the second one).  The dialogue is also well done with some of it being very poetic and poignant.  In particular, Aksel has a lovely little speech on growing up but not being able to let go of things, even though the world has moved on and they don't make sense any more - it really resonated with me in terms of getting older and the world not always hanging around for you.  So, Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier get a shout out for a very decent bit of writing...

...and Joachim also gets a shout out for his direction because it's beautifully shot - a nice mix of rural and urban locations shown off to their maximum potential (Oslo looks very fine).  There's also some beautiful lighting, particularly on people's faces to highlight their expressions.  There's also a really beautiful scene where time stops for all of Oslo except for Julia and one other person - it's really well done as they weave their way through all the stationary people and traffic to go exploring and forget all their troubles.  The magic mushroom trip is also a very well-filmed scene, if maybe not quite so "nice".

Obviously I'm going to have a couple of quibbles - it's rude not to!  It didn't feel like it needed to be a two hour film so I don't think it would have hurt for it to lose 10 or 15 minutes - particularly from the beginning.  My major complaint though is nothing to do with the film and that would be that I saw several reviews describe this as a romcom - and, in my view, it's not very rom or very com.  There are moments of each, but if you came to this expecting Four Weddings and a Funeral then you're going to be very disappointed.  I appreciate people like to give things easy labels but if you're going to do that then at least make it accurate.  And no, I don't know what I'd call it - probably just a "drama" (IMDB goes for "dramedy", which I'm happy with).

Heading down a Wikipedia rabbit-hole for a bit, it tells us that Anders Danielsen Lie is an "actor, musician and medical doctor" - he graduated from med school and works as a GP between film work.  When asked how that worked, his comment was "it doesn't really work and I would never recommend that anybody else combine the two" - you can't fault the lad for honesty!  Additionally, Renate was considering quitting acting before she got the role - quite obviously she had carpentry lined up as her back-up career.  I'm unable to tell you anything about Herbert though because he doesn't have a Wikipedia page - the boy needs to get that sorted!

Back to the film, I really liked this - it was a really good looking film with some interesting characters that tells enough of a story in a way that doesn't spoon feed you.  And it features some great performances, but Renate definitely takes the headlines - it's a really good performance which is well worth checking out.  

At the time of writing, it's available to stream on All4 - it won't be there for long, so hurry along now whilst it's free!  If you insist on renting it, then it's available in all the usual places - but why would you do that?

#31 - A load of old bollocks
#29 - Better than its predecessor