The Julia Set

FESTIVAL REVIEW

The Julia Set follows Julia Fischer (Chase Infiniti), a first-year mathematics student from a modest background who arrives at university seemingly unaware of just how exceptional she is. Quiet, shy, and accustomed to keeping her head down, she is pulled into a study group preparing for the notoriously difficult Putnam Exam by Pascal (Christopher Briney), a teaching assistant who quickly recognizes her talent and, before long, becomes something more than an academic mentor. At first, the two make an appealing pair, sharing the excitement of finding someone who can speak at their level. But Julia is entering a world almost entirely populated by men, and Pascal has spent his life trying to live up to his celebrated mathematician father, Andrew (Jason Isaacs). The better Julia becomes, the harder it is for Pascal to enjoy being by her side.

Niki Byrne approaches the film with firsthand experience, having studied engineering and physics and spoken about spending years in rooms where women were rarely expected to be the ones with the answers. She clearly understands the ways intelligent women can learn to diminish themselves in environments where their success threatens the men around them, but dramatizes that experience with the subtlety of a professor circling the answer on the board. An early moment in which Pascal uses Julia’s answer and happily accepts the credit telegraphs much of what follows, and the warning signs only grow more obvious from there.

To the film’s credit, Julia and Pascal are allowed some genuinely sweet and romantic moments together, and Infiniti and Briney make you believe you are watching two young people falling in love, even as Pascal’s insecurities begin creeping into the relationship. But Byrne rarely trusts those complications to speak for themselves. Scenes reveal their destination and then take too long to get there, while extended monologues from Pascal’s father and Julia’s academic mentor, Dr. Zatlan (Nina Hoss), only add to the frustration, with supposedly brilliant and highly regarded scholars reduced to caricatures. We never quite believe that this environment could keep Julia as quiet as it does, or that Pascal’s increasingly obvious attempts to make her feel guilty would work on her for very long. It does a disservice to Byrne’s subject, because part of what makes a toxic environment so hard to recognize is how quietly it can operate, capable of making even the brightest minds feel small.

Infiniti, however, is working at another level. Following One Battle After Another, she gives a far richer performance than almost anything happening around her, and her body language and uncertain expressions almost convince us of what the screenplay cannot. Watching her slowly regain that spark provides the film’s greatest pleasure. Gillian Anderson also gets a strong late monologue as Pascal’s mother, despite how ridiculous the circumstances surrounding the scene are.

It all leaves The Julia Set as a well-intentioned and important story, but one hammered so relentlessly that its observations lose much of their power. Like Julia, we can only hope that whatever comes next for Infiniti gives her more room to show what she can do.

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