The Worst Person in the World (Verdens Verste Menneske)

Norwegian’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film and Cannes’ Best Actress winner was a dark romantic comedy that succinctly captured the wistful, fleeting, uncertainty and unmoored fragility of the Gen Z/Millennials and broadly - albeit sometimes blatantly - juxtaposed it with the more grounded yet still wishful sensibility of the Gen X/Y-ers.

We followed the intriguing and arresting and infinitely charismatic Renate Reinsve through the years, or as Joachim Trier stated in the opening, through 12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue, as she attempted to discover herself. Inherently, this was a film about her love story to herself. It masked itself as a love story between Reinsve and the men in her life - key of whom was played by Anders Danielsen Lie - as Trier played and mixed with generational expectations, but truly, in the end, we were on a journey hoping that Reinsve’s character figures out what she wants in her life before she fully becomes “The Worst Person in the World”.

Kudos to Trier and Reinsve for managing to tell a story and creating a character who could have been loathsome and unlikeable but ended up being so realistic, relatable and empathetic to. We never really wanted her to fail. We hoped she succeeds. But through the two-hours runtime, we do sometimes wonder if she was worth it. Was this person - this character - worth rooting for? And I think they had achieved it, although the last act may have been too manipulative to feel organic. But, hey, this is a fictional film after all, no?

A stronger contender to make it as one of the nominees come Oscar time. But unlike “Drive My Car”, I doubt it has a chance in the other categories.