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Your 20s are the decade of the unknown \u2013 a period of trial and error in self-discovery, attempted navigation of a career, of toying with love. It\u2019s a time where life\u2019s big questions come into the forefront, but the answers are often vague and indistinguishable. Do you choose the path less trodden, or that paved by societal pressure and expectation?<\/p>\n
The Worst Person in the World, a film by prolific Norwegian director Joachim Trier, takes those timely anxieties and churns out a relatable response. It\u2019s a gritty, personable film that boldly confirms: \u201cIt\u2019s OK to not know where you\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film follows Julie (played by Renate Reinsve), a charming young woman who lives in Oslo and ventures into her 20s armed with the arrogance of intelligence and youthful beauty. Quickly finding herself disenchanted with the expectations of adulthood, she drops out of medical school and works in a bookshop.<\/p>\n
Soon, Julie falls in love with a respected, successful professor named Aksel who she begins to create a life with \u2013 only to have everything disrupted when she gatecrashes a wedding and meets Eivind, a barista.<\/p>\n
At its core the film is a love-letter to being in your 20s, a celebration of those tumultuous years and of venturing unashamedly into the unknown. And so it seems fitting to kick things off by asking Trier (46) and Reinsve (34) about their own experience of that period in their lives when we first sit down to discuss their Oscar-nominated movie.<\/p>
\u201cI still think I\u2019m 20, that\u2019s my problem,\u201d laughs Trier. \u201cI have too good a memory. I wish I could forget certain things. In my 20s I was obsessed with wanting to make movies. I moved to London when I was 23 and spent most of my 20s there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved back to Oslo to make my first feature film when I was 30. I also thought I had experienced the love of my life \u2013 and she left me heartbroken. My 20s was learning about a lot of good things and learning a little about pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Career ambition and heartbreak are similar tropes of Renate Reinsve\u2019s 20s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be an actress,\u201d she says. \u201cI threw away all my books except for the plays and the books on acting. I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to do it\u2019. I got into acting school. I fell in love with someone that went there \u2013 I thought it was going to be the love of my life. When we split up a few years later, I thought, \u2018This will be the end of me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trier adds: \u201cWe really had a tough couple of years at the end of our 20s.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film may be categorised as a romantic-comedy but it feels overwhelmingly like a Bildungsroman, a genre stereotypically dedicated to teenage years. By updating these tropes, The Worst Person in the World is an homage to coming-of-age later in life. It quietly screams \u2013 you do not need to know who you are by the time you turn 30. We don\u2019t stop on our journey of self-discovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked myself the question, \u2018Why isn\u2019t it equally relevant today to make a coming-of-age film about someone turning 30 as it would have been 20 years ago to make a Bildungsroman about someone turning 19?\u2019,\u201d Trier considers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we a) completely incapable of growing up as a society and we still feel lost? That led me to my second conclusion b) maybe this is life. I worship, in our society, the yearning for freedom \u2013 the sense that you have a choice to take responsibility for your existence, your love life, having children or not having children, all that stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tricky and it\u2019s not easily resolved. I sympathise with Julie. She\u2019s not an idiot. She\u2019s smart but she just doesn\u2019t know how to find her role in all of this. Maybe that\u2019s an ongoing feeling that we [as a society] are admitting to more now.\u201d<\/p>\n