Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is the kind of film that sneaks up on you and grabs hold when you’re not expecting it to.

This is just the fifth film from the 48-year-old Norwegian director of Reprise, Oslo, August 31st, Louder Than Bombs, and Thelma. Although marketed as a comedy, The Worst Person in the World is basically a slice-of-life drama with comic moments as well as some deeply moving ones.

Renate Resinve, who won the 2021 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress, has the leading role of a young woman trying to decide what to do with her life as she navigates both career paths and potential husbands.

A would-be writer, she settles uneasily into a relationship with an older established writer and later a young barista. The writer wants children, she does not, neither does the barista, but attitudes and circumstances will change as life goes on.

Trier, whose mentors include British writer-director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies), and his co-writer Eskil Vogt, provide their actors with a strong script leaving room for improvisation, a combination that befits the film’s loose but controlled dynamics.

Resinve, who had begun a career as a carpenter when she was cast in the lead in the film, is a wonderful find. Anders Danielsen Lie (Personal Shopper), who plays her older lover, is the son of actress Tone Danielsen, who began his career as the star of a film called Herman when he was 11 years old. He is now a full-time doctor and part-time actor.
Herbert Nordrum, who plays the young barista, is already an award-winning Norwegian actor.

Just when you think you’ve figured out where the film is going and how it’s all going to turn out, things shift, and shift again just as in real life. For example, here’s part of Lie’s showstopping 11th hour speech:

“I grew up in an age without Internet and mobile phones. I sound like an old fart. But I think about it a lot. The world that I knew… has disappeared. For me it was all about going to stores. Record stores. I’d take the tram to Voices in Grünerløkka. Leaf through used comics at Pretty Price. I can close my eyes and see the aisles at Video Nova in Majorstua. I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting because… we could live among them. We could pick them up. Hold them in our hands. Compare them. That’s all I have. I spent my life doing that. Collecting all that stuff, comics, books… And I just continued, even when it stopped giving me the powerful emotions I felt in my early 20s. I continued anyway. And now it’s all I have left. Knowledge and memories of stupid, futile things nobody cares about.”

Nominated for Oscars for Best International Film and Best Original Screenplay, it lost the former to Drive My Car and the latter to Belfast.

The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions of The Worst Person in the World include new interviews with director Joachim Trier; co-writer Eskil Vogt; actors Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Herbert Nordrum; cinematographer Kasper Tuxen; and sound designer Gisle Tveito.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third installment in the prequel to the Harry Potter series. Like the previous two films in this new series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Fantastic Beats: The Crimes of Grindenwald, it has excellent production design, costume design, visual effects, and sound, all of which factored into awards recognition for the earlier films.

The first was nominated for two Oscars, Production Design and Costume Design, winning for the latter. It was nominated for five BAFTA awards, winning for Production Design. The second was bypassed by Oscar and nominated for just two BAFTA awards, losing both. The new one, which like its predecessors, is heavily comprised of CGI (computer generated imagery), is less likely to garner much awards enthusiasm. Despite its excellent production design, costume design, visual effects, and sound, the story, which starts out well, just chugs along without providing anything substantially new. Nevertheless, veteran Potter director David Yates is expected to film at least two more editions of the series.

Eddie Redmayne (Les Misérables), the star of the previous two films, still gets top billing, but the focus of the narrative in this one is the fight between the good Dumbledore, now played by Jude Law (The Talented Mr. Ripley), and the evil Grindelwald, now played by Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round) over the soul of Credence Barebone, played by Eza Miller (The Perks of Being a Wallflower). Callum Turner (The Only Living Boy in New York) stands out in the large supporting cast as Redmayne’s brother.

Extras on the Warner Bros. Blu-ray and DVD include a history of Dumbledore with input from author J.K. Rowling.

Paramount has finally released a Blu-ray edition of the 1996 comedy The First Wives Club.

Adapted from the best-selling novel by Olivia Goldsmith, the film, with a screenplay by Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias), was a box-office hit featuring an all-star cast that is, alas, not used particularly well.

Stars Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton are great at slinging one-liners, but the story in which the three women follow cameo player Ivana Trump’s advice to “don’t get mad, get everything” is paper thin and obvious. The huge supporting cast is mostly comprised of famous actors in glorified cameos. Among them are Stockard Channing, Sarah Jessica Parker, Marcia Gay Harden, Eileen Heckart, and fourth-billed, but blink and you’ll miss her, Maggie Smith.

Directed by Hugh Wilson (Blast from the Past), it’s an okay time filler, nothing more despite its huge popularity at the time.

A newly filmed interview with Harling is included as an extra.

This week’s new releases include Everything Everywhere All at Once and Downton Abbey: A New Era.