The third film in director Joachim Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy,” The Worst Person in the World provides a series of snapshots in one young woman’s (Renate Reinsve) life over several years living and loving in the Norwegian city. Since its release, The Worst Person in the World has gone on to receive two Academy Award nominations – in the category of Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay for Trier and Eskil Vogt.
Depending on your personal family history, a story like the one told in the 2021 film Passing may not be too eye-opening.
Based on the 1929 Nella Larsen novel of the same name, Passing is the directorial debut of British actor Rebecca Hall. Hall also adapted the screenplay. Passing premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
My history with Rebecca (in print and on screen) goes back … way back to the early 1990s when my academic and cinematic worlds collided. You see, I was in the early days of my classic movie journey/obsession and was immediately drawn to the works of the Master of Suspense himself, one Alfred Hitchcock.
From early on, I was determined to go through his entire filmography in chronological order – well except for some of his early silent films, which at the time were not widely available. Eventually, I arrived at his award-winning 1940 adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier 1938 bestseller of the same name.
At the same time, I was in the midst of my junior year, looking for a subject of my semester term paper in English Lit. Once I found out Rebecca the film was based on the book, I made a beeline to the local library and over the next couple of weeks became completely consumed by the marital tale which had echoes of previous romantic stories I previously read, such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I was also drawn to the traces of the Gothic in the novel. In fact, I centered part of my paper’s thesis on Rebecca as a Gothic work of literature.
When I reflect, composing the paper was an exciting journey of in-depth literary research infused with my earnest investigative nature. The result was a top mark on the paper and an increasing driving enthusiasm for seeing the text come alive on the silver screen.
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