{"id":613965,"date":"2026-09-12T15:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T15:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/613965\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T15:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T15:46:11","slug":"the-julia-set-review-chase-infiniti-is-genius-in-film-lacking-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/613965\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Julia Set’ Review: Chase Infiniti Is Genius in Film Lacking Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a genius isn\u2019t easy \u2014 both real life and the movies love to tell us that<\/a> \u2014 but it\u2019s even harder when said genius isn\u2019t even comfortable with the moniker. One of the first things we learn about Julia Fischer (rising star Chase Infiniti<\/a>) is that, despite her serious brain power, she has a tendency to pretend to not know the stuff she very, very much does. This observation is made early on in Niki Byrne\u2019s \u201cThe Julia Set<\/a>\u201d by Julia\u2019s T.A. Pascal (Christopher Briney, putting a dark edge on his \u201cThe Summer I Turned Pretty\u201d charm) in an attempt to be both a) flirty and b) absolutely sure his word is gospel.<\/p>\n

Both of his gambits work. Julia is suddenly smitten. She\u2019s also at his mercy, completely letting him have the upper hand.<\/p>\n

\"'Iron<\/a> \"TORONTO,<\/a> <\/p>\n

That Pascal\u2019s motives aren\u2019t exactly pure are baked into the premise of Byrne\u2019s film<\/a>, which dimly interrogates some classic material: what if someone was booksmart, but completely out of their depth when it comes to the way the world actually works? That Julia is young and emotionally immature becomes a spectacular crutch for the film, which pummels its ostensible protagonist with enough bad decisions and worse instincts that rooting for her becomes a mere plea for survival. Please, let her get out of this. Let us, too.<\/p>\n

Julia is used to being one of the only girls (if not the only girl) in the room, something Byrne and cinematographer Antonio Calvache delight in showing us in repeated shots that still pack some of the film\u2019s only real power. When Pascal turns his attentions to Julia (swiftly, suspiciously), he grants her entry into a rarefied space: a study group led by the fierce Dr. Zatlan (Julia Hoss), who is preparing a cadre of math geniuses for the Putnam Competition, where they will take arguably the hardest test in the world (and, no, not just in the math world).<\/p>\n

That Julia wants to excel at the test is a given, mostly because it\u2019s what we expect of her (math genius, math competition, you, uh, do the math). But, like so many other details in the film, what we learn about Julia we are simply told. Everyone has a different take on her, but Julia holds herself at such a remove that it\u2019s impossible to feel much for her. That\u2019s clearly part of the formula here \u2014 this is a young woman who has gotten way too used to feeling out of place \u2014 but it does make it hard to invest in her, even when played by such a natural talent as Infiniti.<\/p>\n

The Putnam prep has to also compete with Julia\u2019s budding relationship with Pascal, which is both the film\u2019s most frustrating element and its most human. The guy is a walking red flag, but Julia (again! who is so smart!) can\u2019t see it. He has obvious anger issues, a deeply fucked home life, no friends, a propensity to extreme emotional reactions (when he breaks out with a too-early \u201cI love you,\u201d the TIFF premiere audience groaned), an interest in incredibly obvious gaslighting, and a heck of a wandering eye when it comes to Julia\u2019s homework. She\u2019s unquestionably better than him.<\/p>\n

Despite the darkness of that plotting, Byrne keeps an oddly light tone to the feature. Mostly, that rankles, but during a weekend trip to meet Pascal\u2019s parents, the film suddenly sparks to life. Pascal\u2019s father Aleksander (Jason Isaacs) is a Fields Medal-winning super-brain. His mother Anne (Gillian Anderson) was once his very promising student. It\u2019s a tale as old as time, and one already playing out in the next generation. That Pascal\u2019s parents loathe each other is obvious, but the catty way they attack each other (and Pascal and Julia) is darkly delightful, Isaacs stomping his way through his limited scenes and Anderson unable to huff, sigh, and roll her eyes at her monstrous husband. Where\u2019s their movie?<\/p>\n

Alas, it\u2019s soon back to Julia and Pascal\u2019s school, time for more studying and more elementary-level brainwashing. And, about that school! Like many of the smaller details of \u201cThe Julia Set,\u201d the ways and means of \u201cGCU\u201d confound. Julia is a freshman in the early months of her college career (Thanksgiving weekend figures prominently), but she\u2019s already extremely close with her roommate Erin (an effervescent Chloe Bailey). Are the two friends from home? That\u2019s never answered. Julia bemoans that her family doesn\u2019t understand what she does or the level of her talent, but her mother (Carmen Ejogo) is obsessed with her transferring to MIT. <\/p>\n

Also not clear: how we\u2019re supposed to feel about their university. On one hand, it\u2019s a good enough school to attract Julia, but it\u2019s a bottom-of-the-barrel choice for Pascal, whose father is a rich math genius (OK, sure). Rich enough, in fact, to slap the family name on a paid-for hall at the school and a disarmingly swank apartment for the kid, but not rich enough to get his failson into his own alma mater. Good luck guessing the setting of the film, the location of the school, even the year it takes place in. It\u2019s as if it was flung out of space, and not particularly well.<\/p>\n

At one point in the film, Julia looks over Pascal\u2019s work and notes that, while his answers are ostensibly right, he\u2019s taking way too long to get to them. There are easier ways to work these problems, she says. There are more elegant ways. Such is the case with \u201cThe Julia Set.\u201d There are better ways to do this, easier ways, more elegant ways. It doesn\u2019t have to feel like so much, well, homework.<\/p>\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Julia Set\u201d premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being a genius isn\u2019t easy \u2014 both real life and the movies love to tell us that \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[19814,146,2320,878,85,46,397,1530,277938],"class_list":["post-613965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-chase-infiniti","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-the-julia-set"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}