The Julia Set, starring Chase Infiniti in her first big role since One Battle After Another and The Testaments, and Christopher Briney in his first one trying to break out of the character he built in The Summer I Turned Pretty, is the kind of movie that, on the surface, can feel pretty predictable. There’s only one satisfying way for the story to go, after all. But movies don’t have to deliver a shocking twist to be enjoyable. They just have to move you.
My experience at the world premiere of the movie at TIFF speaks to what The Julia Set was trying to do, and how well it delivers. There were gasps, boos, and even scattered cheers for Julia. There was also applause at various times for Infiniti’s Julia and, at one point, for Gillian Anderson, playing Pascal’s (Briney) mom. The audience was pretty engaged throughout, and they had strong feelings. That’s all you can ask of a movie.
The story follows Julia, a gifted university student who becomes romantically involved with her TA (never a good idea), as they both prepare for the Putnam Exam, the most challenging math competition in North America. It all starts pretty well, even if it feels like Pascal is love bombing Julia from minute 2. But it all quickly turns into an exploration of not just who is great, but who we expect greatness from in the first place. This isn’t your typical smart girl meets smart boy movie. It’s more a ‘why do we expect the white boy to be smart and keep asking the Black girl to prove she is’ kinda thing, which is frankly much better.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs deliver very strong supporting performances, which add gravitas to a movie that at times feels a little light, despite the math. But it’s Infiniti, who plays Julia with certainty and depth, while still keeping her performance understated, that makes the movie work. We want Julia to not just own how brilliant she is, but how much she deserves to be recognized for it and to have people celebrate her achievements.
We want her to talk to her mother. We want her to stop making herself small when she’s destined to shine.
The movie also doesn’t work without Briney, whose Pascal is one of the most despicable characters I’ve seen in a movie in a while. He’s not a comic-book villain, but he is indeed a villain, and real ones are always worse because they cut so much deeper. Men like Pascal never think they are the villain, because they believe they don’t have to earn anything in life; they’re owed greatness. That’s what makes it disturbing, and what makes Briney’s performance so good.
He’s very much a product of his environment, but the movie isn’t about Pascal or even about the burden of expectations; it’s about why those expectations even exist in the first place and what it says about us as a society that we so easily place them on some people and claim it’s a kindness to spare others.
We’ve all met a Pascal, and perhaps, at one point in our lives, we’ve been a Julia. The Julia Set invites us to sit with that and to ask for better, from ourselves and from others.
At the end of the movie, I thought… well, this went where I expected it to go. Thank God. Some movies can and should surprise you. This one wouldn’t have worked if it ended up going anywhere other than where it went. It also wouldn’t have worked with a different cast. Thankfully, The Julia Set is what it is, and the result is a pretty enjoyable watch.
The Julia Set screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
