THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
If you see one melancholic Norwegian indie this year, then you better make it Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. This film has already won its star Renate Reinsve the Best Actress prize in Cannes. Now it’s up for a host of awards including two Oscars, accolades this life-affirming tale of love, death and indecision richly deserves. Reinsve plays Julie, a medical student in Oslo who quits to pursue psychology. Still unsatisfied, she then considers photography, almost on a whim, as she scrolls through her phone looking at her pictures. Brilliantly embodied by Reinsve, who makes her feel so relatable and real, Julie’s a character we’ve all met before. Approaching her 30th birthday at the outset , her occupation isn’t the only thing troubling her. Is she ready for kids, love, commitment? Even when she meets Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a successful, provocative comic book artist some 15 years her senior, she is left teetering on the brink of the rest of her life, feeling there might be something else out there for her.
Told in chapters, the film gradually builds towards something profound. Life is precious and fleeting and Trier offers no sentimental Hollywood ending here. Instead, he evocatively explores Julie’s inner psyche—notably in the visually arresting scene where she runs through the city streets with cars, pedestrians, and cyclists all frozen in time.
Filled too with poignant exchanges—lie’s speech about his world gradually disappearing hits a nerve—this is a remarkably textured work that you won’t forget in a hurry.
The Worst Person in the World is Norway’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film award at this year’s Oscars. But make sure you don’t miss these other exceptional contenders from around the world…
THE HAND OF GOD, Italy
Visionary director Paolo
Sorrentino returns with another vivid, beautifully aching piece of cinema, this time set in his hometown of Naples. Said to be his most personal film to date,
The Hand of God stars his evercharismatic, long-time collaborator, Toni Servillo.
LAMB, Iceland
This dark little gem of a film won the Prize of Originality at the 2021 Cannes film festival, and deservedly so. It’s an unnerving, genre-defying story about a couple on a remote farm in rural Iceland, who find their quiet existence shaken by the discovery of a mysterious newborn among their sheep.
FLEE, Denmark
Continuously lauded by critics since day one, Flee is a striking animation film about love, self-discovery and the refugee experience. It is also the first film to be simultaneously eligible for consideration in the Oscar categories for Animated Feature, Documentary Feature, and International Feature Film.
HIVE, Albania
A powerful, unsparing drama about an Albanian widow, mother and entrepreneur in post-war Kosovo, anchored by outstanding performances and a no-nonsense approach to its difficult subject matter. Hive became the first film to win all three main awards at the Sundance film festival.
Ideas cross borders ever faster in the digital age. The mega hit Scandie crime drama The Bridge inspired two variants: the Anglo-french The Tunnel (similar crimes, under the English Channel) and the altogether Teutonic Der Pass (NOW TV), which finds mismatched German and Austrian detectives counting corpses in the Bavarian
Alps. Its second series demonstrates a desire to pursue a more distinctive, densely atmospheric path, its damaged, compromised leads compelling even as the plot cracks like ice beneath their feet. There’s nothing drastically new under its low winter sun, but it grips nevertheless.
Larkier is Murderville (Netflix), an appreciably slick US upscale of the BBC’S Murder in Successville. It has a unique pitch: in each episode, a hardbitten cop (Will Arnett, returning to Arrested Development form) breaks in a new sidekick played by an actual celebrity. Twist: the celebs must improvise their responses, a wrinkle that keeps even the most humdrum of the show’s whodunnits fresh, while foregrounding the potential for mischief in making TV. The best episodes are saved for last: Sharon Stone reminds us she’s an absolute star, while Ken Jeong can barely survive a scene without infectious giggling.
Looking beyond the myriad Masked Singers and Iron Chefs, Last One Laughing: Canada (Prime Video) forms the latest, starriest incarnation of a Japanese format that’s basically Big Brother with comedians. Spring also promises Ten Per Cent (also Prime), a British adaptation of French fave Call My Agent! overseen by
W1A’S John Morton. After that come Hindi, Tamil and Telugu variations on Prime’s Modern Love, the romantic portmanteau drawn from columns in The New York Times. Can we still moan about repeats when the shows are broadcast in another tongue?