I think almost everyone can probably find at least a small piece of themselves in The Worst Person in the World.

Julie spends much of the movie trying to figure out who she actually wants to be. She changes direction, questions her relationships, makes decisions, regrets some of them, and then questions herself again. The movie even presents her life almost like a book, with a prologue, twelve chapters and an epilogue, which fits this feeling surprisingly well.

Watching her also made me think about something I probably see a little differently from the movie.

I have a rather traditional and romantic understanding of love. I like the idea of choosing one person, being loyal to that person, and trying to make it work rather than constantly wondering whether another possibility somewhere might make me happier.

So in that sense, I cannot really relate to Julie that much.

But maybe that is also why I found the movie so interesting.

It is easy to understand the desire to find oneself, especially when there are so many possible versions of a life to choose from. Career, relationships, children, freedom, stability… At some point having endless possibilities can probably become its own kind of problem. Julie keeps searching for the version of herself that finally feels right, and sometimes people around her get hurt during that search.

That also reminded me of a Stefan Zweig book I had read years ago, and I finally remembered which one it was: Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman.

At the beginning, a group of people are discussing a married woman, Madame Henriette, who suddenly leaves her husband and two children to run away with a man she has only just met. Almost everyone immediately condemns her, while the narrator argues that perhaps such a sudden decision is not as impossible as they want to believe.

I remember that discussion more than most of the actual story.

There is something similar here. It is very easy to look at somebody else’s decisions from the outside and decide whether that person was selfish, disloyal, confused, or simply wrong.

It becomes much more complicated when life is actually happening.

I think that is also why I like the title so much.

Julie is obviously not the worst person in the world.

She is just a person making choices, sometimes good ones, sometimes bad ones, while trying to understand what she wants.

And in the end, whether those choices were right or wrong, life simply keeps going.

Maybe that is the part of the movie I relate to most.