Sightlines · reception
How The Worst Person in the World was received
2021 · Joachim Trier · The Worst Person in the World on Sightlines
The arc
No reappraisal needed — it detonated at Cannes 2021 (Best Actress for Renate Reinsve), rode the wave to two Oscar nominations, and within a year had hardened into *the* millennial movie of the decade. If anything the arc runs the other way: so instantly beloved that the backlash cycle started early.
What’s debated
The perennial fight is over Julie herself — is the film a tender portrait of drift or a flattering mirror for commitment-phobes, and does she even remotely earn that title?
Its footprint
The frozen-time sequence — Julie sprinting through a paused Oslo — became one of the most gif'd, screenshotted romantic images of the 2020s, and the title itself turned into self-deprecating shorthand for captioning your own worst behavior.
Where it stands
The capstone of Trier's Oslo Trilogy (after Reprise and Oslo, August 31st) and a stone-cold Letterboxd favorite — arguably the defining 'sad millennial' canon entry of its era.
Did you know? Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt wrote Julie specifically for Renate Reinsve — who'd had just one line in Oslo, August 31st a decade earlier and has said she'd decided to quit acting the day before Trier offered her the lead; she went on to win Best Actress at Cannes.
Named by the director
- Eden (2014) — Trier cited Mia Hansen-Løve's film as an inspiration for how to condense years of a life into a sophisticated structure.
- The Age of Innocence (1993) — Trier pointed to Scorsese's literary voiceover as the model for the film's omniscient narrator.
- Éric Rohmer — Trier named Rohmer as a touchstone for finding the big questions of love inside everyday moments.
- Paul Mazursky — Trier praised Mazursky's humanist comedies as a tonal model — a playful, humoristic edge on serious subject matter.
- George Cukor — Trier cited Cukor's screwball comedies as a reference point for playing with the romantic-comedy tradition.