Why I Fuck With ‘The Worst Person In The World’

February 2022. Totally broke in Amsterdam on a brief holiday slash needed mental break. I can’t afford to do much but decide on a cinema tour, checking out the best of the city’s arthouse offerings. I bring my laptop and hopes to finish some screenplays.

I’ve heard chatter about this film ‘The Worst Person In The World’ on Twitter. The seal of approval from indie kids and filmmakers. One said it’s the film you watch and wish you’d written. Because the film is Norwegian, it takes me a little while to find a screening in Amsterdam with English subtitles.

The day before watching the film, my friend flies over to join me. We end up at a party in student accomodation that has the vibes of abandoned warehouse meets plants from IKEA. I roll back to my hostel bed the next morning but my friend is stronger in soldiering on in the socialising wars. When we rejoin forces, I mention the cinema suggestion. It’s a hit or miss with severe tiredness battling against us. But we go. And honestly, thank fuck we do.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ firstly because of the lead character. Julie. It’s weird to even refer to her as a character given her realness. The moment I fall for her is when she walks away from a party under the early-evening sky and tears slide out. We know her life at this stage, her hopping from one thing to the next and struggling to find her career and place in the world.

Solitary tears escape her eyelids as she walks along in her black gown. It’s a moment of “I should be happy. But I’m not. Something in life is amiss. I am in the world and I am not”. This weird and relatable place. I fall in love with her at this moment. There is also the moment I know I want to go on a journey with her.

She crashes a wedding party in a fairy lighted Oslo house and makes her way to the free wine. This is the teaching moment for me. The detail in the screenplay that hooks me on her. I’m here for it. I’ll follow this woman. Let’s fucking goooooo.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ because of what it says.

Sometimes I feel like the worst person in the world. Sometimes I make decisions or carry out actions that hurt other people. Sometimes I fail in my relationships. Sometimes I am full of enthusiasm for a new pursuit and deflate like a balloon losing helium. Sometimes I am messy. Sometimes I am loud. Sometimes I let my ego get the better of me. Sometimes I am unkind. Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong decision. Sometimes I fuck things up. Sometimes I’m ravenous for validation. Sometimes I think I know and I don’t. Sometimes I feel like the worst person in the world. Sometimes, and always, I’m just human.

That is what ‘The Worst Person In The World’ says to me.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ because it’s funny. Comedy is a gift, and anyway, I’m Irish – if I want to say something serious or sad, I’ll do it with a laugh. The conversations in this film absorb me. I’m watching a scene and feel that I’m the seventh person at the dinner party. I say nothing and just listen. And it’s the best listening ever. The conflicts are so fruitful. The carefully constructed and nontypical sexual tensions are unforgettable.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ because the music. My Spotify now blessed with its additions. The film ends with Art Garfunkel – Waters Of March. It’s about the inevitable passing of time and life. The song feels like this: you break up with your partner at 6am and you don’t have enough money for a taxi so you take a bus. On that bus someone falls asleep on your shoulder. You sit there staring ahead with your criminally smudged mascara and this snorer on your shoulder. That’s when you would play Waters of March. Things happen to you. It is the stream of life. You have to float down it. No matter if you’re sinking or swimming.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ because it’s honest. The actions, behaviours, consciousness, conflict. All honest for better or for worse. There is nothing more to say about that. It’s the bottom line.

I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’ because it’s sexy. There is a sequence of temptation executed unlike anything seen before. It captures the feeling of someone new unearthing your world. All sense is out the window and all you have to guide you now are your wandering eyes and libido. You’re probably going to be dehydrated on a train in a few years and look back and wonder, will I ever have sex that good again? Can I blissfully remember all the pillow talk word for word? Was that a sexy peak in my life? Terrifying. Thrilling.

There are a lot of reasons that I fuck with ‘The Worst Person In The World’. Here is one last to throw into the ether.

Back to this day in Amsterdam that me and my friend see it for the first time (before we go on to rewatch ten days later at Dublin Film Festival).

The film ends and the people around us gradually file out of the screen. We are still there. Cathartic tears construct streams on our faces. And we laugh. Oh fuck do we laugh. Two watery dipshits blubbering. Two blubbery dipshits who are in their mid to late twenties. Two blubbery dipshits who understand Julie figuring herself out on the homestretch to thirty. Two blubbery dipshits who understand how it is to sometimes feel like the worst person in the world.

But we’re not.

We’re human. Albeit the blubbery dipshit ones.

Go see this movie. In Irish cinemas March 25.