film / 2021
The Worst Person in the World
Julie moves through careers and relationships in Oslo while trying to tell the difference between freedom, avoidance, and the life she actually wants.
Verified facts
- Runtime
- 2h 8m
- Director
- Joachim Trier
- Released
- 2021
- Origin
- Norway
PlotGeeks explainer signals
Why read this explainer
The chapters can make Julie's life feel episodic, but the film builds a clear emotional argument about choice and consequence. This guide keeps Aksel, Eivind, work, and the final time shift connected.
PlotGeeks note
Julie is not condemned for changing her mind. The harder question is whether possibility can remain meaningful when she treats every settled choice as a threat.
Connected knowledge
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Timeline
Major events
- Julie builds a life with Aksel
Affection grows alongside a widening difference over age, children, and commitment.
- Time stops during Julie's escape
The fantasy sequence turns her attraction to Eivind into a temporary world without consequences.
- Aksel reveals his illness
Mortality changes how Julie understands their past without restoring the relationship.
- Julie works behind the camera
The final scene gives her a practice and perspective not defined by either former partner.
Story in 60 Seconds
The short version
Julie moves from medicine to psychology, photography, and writing while dating older comic-book artist Aksel. Their relationship is affectionate, but disagreements about children and commitment expose different ideas of time. At a wedding, Julie meets Eivind and begins an intimate encounter that stops short of sex. She later leaves Aksel and starts a relationship with Eivind. The new life initially feels freer, yet it also develops limits and misunderstandings. Julie's essay gains attention, she becomes pregnant, and she learns that Aksel has terminal cancer. His illness forces her to reconsider the relationship and the years they shared without turning nostalgia into a simple wish to return.
Spoiler sectionEnding ExplainedShow ending detailsHide ending details
Julie miscarries and spends time with Aksel before his death. Years later, she works as an on-set photographer and sees Eivind with a partner and child. She returns to editing photographs in her apartment, neither punished nor delivered by romance. The ending shows a life that has acquired shape through work, loss, and choices that cannot be reversed. Julie remains unfinished, but she is no longer waiting for endless possibility to tell her who to become.
Original context
Why it matters
The chapter titles resist a single verdict
Episodes give Julie's changes room to be comic, selfish, generous, frightened, and sincere. No one decision provides the final explanation of her.
Key turning points
Aksel talks about objects disappearing
His grief for physical culture is also grief for his own coming absence. Julie listens from a future he will not share.
Character links
Who connects to whom
Character motivations
Julie wants freedom to become direction
She is good at leaving lives that feel wrong but slower to build one she can inhabit. Photography finally gives looking and choosing a durable form.
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