The Worst Person in the World (2021)
★★★★ — The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Norway has produced a quietly impressive body of cinema over the past two decades, ranging from genre fare like Dead Snow to documentary work such as No Other Land, and it is very much a country worth watching when it comes to international film. The Worst Person in the World, released in 2021 and co-produced across Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and France by Oslo Pictures among others, sits at a rather different point on that spectrum: a warm, funny, and emotionally honest romantic drama concerned with the particular kind of uncertainty that defines your late twenties and early thirties. The story follows Julie over roughly four years of her life, as she moves between relationships, restarts her career more than once, and tries to work out who she actually is when nobody is watching. It is the sort of film that resists easy summary because the point is less about what happens and more about how it all feels.
The film is the third instalment of what director Joachim Trier has called his Oslo trilogy, following Reprise and Oslo, 31 August, and it confirms his standing as one of the more distinctive voices working in European cinema right now. Trier co-wrote the script with Eskil Vogt, a long-time collaborator, and the two have a knack for writing characters who feel genuinely unresolved rather than neatly sketched. The film runs to 128 minutes and is structured in chapters, a formal choice that suits the stop-start rhythm of Julie's life. For those who enjoy this kind of emotionally grounded drama, it sits comfortably alongside films like Call Me by Your Name or the Taiwanese family portrait Yi Yi, both of which share that quality of watching a life unfold at close quarters without much interest in tidy resolution.
The central performance comes from Renate Reinsve, who won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 2021 for the role, her first major leading part in a feature. Opposite her, Anders Danielsen Lie plays Aksel, an established cartoonist and Julie's older partner. Danielsen Lie is himself a familiar face in Norwegian cinema and has appeared in earlier Trier films, so there is a natural ease to his work here. Herbert Nordrum rounds out the principal love triangle as Eivind, and the supporting cast includes Hans Olav Brenner and Helene Bjørneby in smaller but well-drawn roles. The ensemble is polished but, more importantly, believable: these people feel like they existed before the camera turned on.
A-Z World Movie Tour Norway For a moment, I thought this might be a five-star film. The opening acts are electric (sharp, funny, deeply human) capturing the restless energy of youth, identity, and the agonising freedom of having too many choices. Joachim Trier’s romantic dramedy isn’t just a coming-of-age story for your twenties; it’s a portrait of someone trying to figure out who they are in a world that keeps demanding answers before you’re ready to give them. And Renate Reinsve, in a star-making turn, is really good as Julie. Intelligent, impulsive, contradictory, and achingly real. But the film truly catches fire whenever Anders Danielsen Lie appears. As Aksel, the older cartoonist who becomes Julie’s lover, he brings a quiet intensity, warmth, and melancholy that elevates every scene he’s in. Their relationship is the emotional core of the film, tender, complicated, and grounded in real emotional stakes. The dinner-table argument, the quiet moments of intimacy, the devastating aftermath of their breakup, Danielsen Lie carries them with a rare blend of vulnerability and dignity. He’s not just good, he’s extraordinary, and easily the film’s most resonant presence. Even when the narrative begins to meander (particularly in the third act, where Julie drifts through new encounters and existential musings with less focus) the film never loses its visual and sonic beauty. The cinematography is alive with colour and spontaneity, from the time-freeze sequence through Oslo to the soft, natural lighting of private moments. And the soundtrack is a perfect companion, blending melancholy electronica and indie pop into a soundscape that feels like memory in motion. It doesn’t quite sustain the brilliance of its beginning, and the final stretch lacks the same narrative drive. But as a whole, The Worst Person in the World is a triumph, a modern, deeply felt exploration of love, ambition, and the search for self. Not flawless, but unforgettable. And Anders Danielsen Lie is an absolute master.
I'll be honest, Anders Danielsen Lie is the reason I find myself thinking about this film days after watching it. Reinsve is excellent, no question, but it's Lie who kept pulling my attention back, that quiet weight he carries in every scene. Films like this live or die on whether you believe in the emotional reality of what you're watching, and he makes it very easy to believe. The Oslo setting helps too, giving the whole thing a lived-in texture that a more polished production might have scrubbed clean. It's the kind of film I'd happily watch again, and that's not something I say lightly about a two-hour drama. Some films are good. Some stay with you. This one stays.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2021 | Watched: 2025-08-07
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Worst Person in the World (2021) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel · Channel 4 Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Norway: Dead Snow (2009) · The Family (2017) · No Other Land (2024) · One Love (2003)
More from the 2020s: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · The Long Walk (2025) · Americana (2023)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More romance: The Eagle (1925) · The Last Picture Show (1971) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928)
