The Worst Person In The World, a Joachim Trier movie filmed in Oslo, Norway (and nominated for Best International Feature Film), is a movie I think every woman concerned with finding their identity in the new world would love and appreciate and, every man who cares about women ought to see.

First off, some housekeeping. For some reason, the movie claims to be a romantic comedy, but a few funny scenes do not make a comedy. It is not a comedy, and it is not funny. It is provocative, thoughtful, sad at times, and innovative. It is a movie well worth seeing.

The film asks the question almost every woman in the Western world asks herself again and again: who do I want to be, and do I want to be it without depending on a man or partner? 

Julie (Renate Reinsve) struggles with just who she thinks she is.

Unlike most women and men in the world, she is drop-dead gorgeous with the expected perfect Hollywood body. It’s not for me to say as a man, but I wonder how most people – few of us are drop-dead gorgeous – relate to that presentation of women struggling with ordinary life and their relationships with men.

She looks nothing like any woman I’ve ever met. It bothered me, and I am neither female nor gorgeous. Her acting in the film was great.

The title is meant to grab our attention, but it’s a bit of a scam. It doesn’t refer to Julie at all, but to someone else in the film (and no one else is drop-dead gorgeous) who is the nicest person in the movie.

The film is broken into 12 chapters – it is both creatively constructed and is perhaps the best movie character study I’ve ever seen. We get to know Julie in a way no Hollywood movie star is ever known in a film. Trier takes his time and fills in the blanks. We see her grow up.

The evolution of Julie from an obnoxious, sex-obsessed, brazenly indifferent to norms and conventional morality person to a wise and grounded human is fascinating and wonderfully done. She isn’t the nicest person in the world, and she doesn’t seem to have any female friends.

I cared about her, but it took a while to like her and respect her. Trier did a great job with that.

In American movies, the female stars are always talking to their friends. Julie only really talks to herself.

But she is honest and fiercely independent. She awakens slowly but steadily to her truth and faces up to it.

One of the fundamental questions women in our culture seem to be asking, in addition to who they are and want to be, is how much they need men and children to be happy and fulfilled.

That is the issue at the core of this movie, and it could hardly be presented in a more honest and thought-provoking way. This is another of those intellectual thinking movies the great European filmmakers are known for, and the great directors (Jane Campion excepted, and she is from New Zealand) are rarely permitted to make.

It was fascinating to see The Batman and The Worst Person In The World within three days of one another, and they are the literal opposites of one another. There isn’t a single car chase, explosion, or murder in the movie. God bless the Europeans.

This story is a feminist romance, not a comedy; I don’t remember laughing once.

Julie is an outlier at first. She abandons medical school to study psychology, ditches that to become a photographer, sleeps with a sleazy professor, takes a job in a bookstore.

She changes her hair color several times, casts off a sweet boyfriend, has a brief fling with a hunky bald model, and moves on to two very significant relationships, the first with Aksel, a graphic novelist in his 40’s, the second with Elvind, a kind and loving barista closer to her age, something she thinks she needs.

Julie has a sense of humor, but it is often cruel, a source of laughter, perhaps, but not from me.

Trier made Oslo a constant backdrop in the film – he loves the city. Oslo in the movie is clean-cut, well-lit, safe, and middle class.

Trier has a keen satirical eye for the pretensions of the Norwegian middle class as they struggle with parenthood, fitness, culture, and climate change.

In the tradition of European directors, the film is cerebral, not emotional.

A lot is happening,  touching, revealing, and inspiring. There is no drama or America-style theatrics or hysteria. Everybody keeps their cool, even in a crisis.

Someone is always about to cry, and real-life, real families and real mortality are in the air.

I recommend the movie enthusiastically for people who love to see creative and innovative films and for women and men seeking to comprehend the new realities of women and their lives and choices.

Julie is interesting for many reasons; one of them is that she is faced with choices most women in the world still do not have, and many others have only recently had to make. We get to follow her thought processes every step of the way.

I can’t think of a more topical movie, and Trier is brave and honest in presenting it. The film is gripping; it hangs on for every minute of its two hours.

Julie grows up before our lives as she faces life and her flaws, and she ends up figuring out who she is and who she wants to be, which was, to me, a happy ending tinged with sorrow.