Fleapit revisited:The Worst Person In The World.

"Everything we feel, we have to put into words. Sometimes, I just want to feel things" - Julie

What a wonderful movie The Worst Person In The World is. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, warm, moving, thought provoking, and, at times, surprisingly funny. It tells the story of Julie (Renate Reinsve), an intelligent young woman living in Oslo who trades in her studies to become a doctor to work in a bookshop and indulge her passions for photography and writing.

Most notably a blog post called Oral Sex in the Age of #MeToo. Julie is kind, attractive, and has a magnetic charm that draws people into her orbit. But she's also torn. She's torn between staying the eternal teenager, partying and staying childless, and embracing adulthood. She's torn between doing what's right for her, doing what's right for those who love her and whom she loves in return, and doing what society demands and expects of a young woman.

More than anything she's torn on the issue of becoming a mother. Her own family, specifically her father Per Harald (Vidar Sandem), enact an incuriosity bordering on negligence when it comes to Julie's life (Per Harald misses her 30th birthday party and appears not to have even bothered opening an e-mail she's sent him) so, perhaps, it's unsurprising that Julie should be unsure about her suitability as a mother.

She's not even sure she wants that gig. We see her horrified by screaming toddlers at a party. But then we also see her lovingly watch an uncle helping his nephews colouring in. The two men in her life, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), are quite different but both of them are well meaning and kind and, like Julie, prone to the occasional mistake.

As we all are. The Worst Person in the World (or to give it its Norwegian title - Verdens verste menneske) is a strange choice for a title because these people are so far from being that. Aksel is a decade or so older than Julie and has made something of a name for himself drawing the comic book Bobcat about a crude street urchin feline that seems likely, sooner or later, to fall foul of woke culture but does have, as is mentioned, "one of the most iconic buttholes ever".

Aksel dotes on Julie, adores her, but sometimes is too engrossed in his work to see when she's feeling ignored. Eivind, a seemingly unambitious barista, is equally smitten with her and neither of the men, nor Julie herself, ever act out of, or even show any, jealousy. Even though Eivind's ex-partner Sunniva (Maria Grazio Di Meo) has garnered a huge Instagram following where she shares photos of her somewhat prominent bum to raise awareness of climate change issues.

Particularly those relating to the Sami people which, following a camping holiday in which she stroked a moose in Finnmark, she has discovered she has 3.1% ancestry of. It's quirky touches like this that add to Joachim Trier's film's charm and butter you up for some of the sucker punches that are so artfully delivered later on.

Julie and Eivind flirting, but definitely not cheating, outrageously. The time they take magic mushrooms and she has a trip to rival that of Bojack Horseman and even includes her throwing a bloody tampon in her dad's face. A man explaining the concept of mansplaining to a group of younger women. There's also a dream sequence in which everyone else in the world stands still so that Julie can live out one of her fantasies.

Set out, thankfully unobtrusively, as if in book format (with a prologue, twelve chapters, and a epilogue) and with a soundtrack that includes tracks from Art Garfunkel, Christoper Cross, Amerie, and Cymande as well as a dance sequence that would fit neatly into a Luca Guadagnino film, The Worst Person In The World is something of a slow burner at first, but its charm soon becomes as enchanting to us, the viewers, as Julie's is to Aksel and Eivind.

By the end I'm fully emotionally engaged to the point I have to, as so often, wipe tears from my eyes. The Worst Person in the World touched on so many themes that are dear to my heart and possibly, hopefully, universal.

Those of regret, loneliness, lost love, growing old and losing one's health and even one's dignity, nostalgia, feeling adrift in a world that has moved on so drastically since our youth, and trying to do the right thing for everyone involved, not least yourself, when you're not totally sure what that thing is.

As Julie looks out over the city of Oslo she sees in front or her, as we all do - when we are young, a land of endless possibility. Later on in life we look, instead, backwards and try to make sense of the paths we took, the decisions we made, and come to terms with the life we have lived. The Worst Person In The World illustrated that journey, and the many pitfalls en route - as well as the many pleasures, perfectly. I loved it.