I don’t care for the title because it doesn’t reflect the main character, Julie, which I believe it references.  Sure, Julie is narcissistic, selfish, thoughtless, immature, rather superficial and sometimes foolish, but she isn’t the worst person in the world.  In fact, although I didn’t like Julie much for the first half hour or so, this film about Julie’s life is so deeply personal and involving that I grew to care about her and even wish her happiness.  It’s one of those European movies about life that defies description, but which seems to get to the heart of being human more than most of our own movies.

Joaquim Trier’s film introduces us to young Julie (Renate Reinsve), who wants to be a doctor.  Then a psychologist.  Then a photographer.  She ends up working in a bookstore, and the focus of her life becomes the men she turns to for love.  These are some bald dude, then the comic book artist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), and later a kind man named Eivind (Herbert Nordrum).  As Julie matures, so do her relationships, and by the end of the movie she seems to be a full-fledged adult.

This beautifully photographed Norwegian story (which is nominated for two Oscars) is all about life — the messy, peevish, contrarian, inexplainable existence that Julie and her friends experience.  It’s about everything, from birth to death, sideswiping all sorts of important and personal topics along the way, from feminism and sexism to mortality and how color influences comic book art.  Romance is at the crux of Julie’s life: love, sex, breaking up, the promise of a new lover, fear of commitment, etc.  Her love life is intended to be rather universal, I think, but the two most important men she loves are, in movie terms at least, too good to be true.  They are flawed, of course, like all of us, but they treat Julie with so much respect and adoration that they don’t always seem real.  Still, that’s nice to see.

The movie does a fine job of maintaining the complexities of its characters, and of sustaining dialogue that is both meaningful and so much deeper than that of most American films.  Renate Reinsve is a talented actress who makes the most of this opportunity; her Julie is a memorable woman who will fascinate movie audiences as this film is discovered and rewatched for years to come.  It is a little disconcerting to me that there is no overdriving plot (I don’t see enough European movies to be accustomed to their way of thinking), yet for discerning viewers who are not looking for superheroes or alien invasions or car chases, this is a sexy, incisive, meaningful human drama to be savored in their stead.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  2 March 2022.