At TIFF this year, I got to see the world premiere of The Julia Set, director Niki Byrne’s debut. The film follows Julia (Chase Infiniti), who is a talented mathematician in her freshman year of college. As she gets into a relationship with her T.A., Pascal (Christopher Briney), he invites her to an elite study group that focuses on trying to pass the hardest math exam in the country. Byrne’s film tries to dive deep into prestige academia, showing the highlights and lowlights of being a part of a system like this. 

It is a pressure-cooker environment for Julia as she deals with her relationship with Pascal and tries to pass the math exam, because passing it can get you into nearly any school in the country. What I appreciate about Byrne’s approach is that she perfectly encapsulates the ideas of being a product of your environment and how you give yourself over to that product before yourself. The unfortunate part is that some scenes do this well, but overall, I wish it dug deeper into the nuances of what the movie is about. The structure of this ebbs and flows into wanting to be something more than it is, but it never goes over the hump to be wholly unique. 

The relationship between Julia and Pascal is superficial, and Briney plays the toxic boyfriend incredibly well. However, the role is very by the book, and the character isn’t doing anything different than what we have seen in other films with characters like this. I will say some of the decisions his character makes, and lines he gets to say, got great reactions from my crowd and even got a couple of reactions from me. So, at least you know the character is doing his job, even if there is nothing that makes it fully stand out as something different. 

His character also suffers from the trope of being this way because his dad is hard on him and he wants to live up to his dad’s standards. His dad, played by Jason Isaacs, is a prestigious mathematician who consistently tries to push Pascal to the limit, which in turn enables the toxic behavior he portrays toward Julia. The limited screen time from Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson as his parents is great supporting work, and I wish they were able to be in the film more. 

There are even grander ideas one could approach with the relationship between Pascal and his parents, but once again it is another subject that does not go deeper than the surface. It is the stereotypical relationship and fights between characters like these, and while you understand how the characters are, it is just a baseline understanding of the ideas trying to be presented about prestige academics. 

The other aspects that you could tackle with the story could be the dedication between the expectations and realities of academics and how those expectations most of the time are not met, so it drives students into a spiral of sorts. With this spiral, they lose confidence in the field they are great in, which in turn leads to burnout and having disdain for the academic process as a whole. Those ideas never make it into the film; you only get glimpses before it turns into a generic crowd-pleaser. 

The best part of the film by far is Chase Infiniti as she elevates the average material. She commands the screen with a great presence and really heightens every scene she is in. Julia could have been a very simple character, but Infiniti is able to give her a spark, and she is able to work incredibly well with whoever her scene partner it is. She never feels out of place in this movie which is the best compliment I can give her. I do hope she will challenge herself in future movies because we know she can do great with nuanced material in One Battle After Another (2025). 

The script as mentioned doesn’t go above and beyond for such an intriguing premise as this could be. There are a lot of interesting ways you could go about traversing prestige academia, but it goes a simple route where the overall resolutions are ones you could have concluded within the first 20 minutes. The direction is also easy and there are no scenes or shots that show any individual flare unfortunately. I understand it is a debut but with so many incredible debuts coming out within the last couple of years it would be great if more creativity was used for the direction and the story. 

The Julia Set is a perfectly fine movie that does end up doing its job which is to be a crowd-pleaser, but for the premise I was expecting to get something more. The middling material is elevated by great performances that really save the movie from being something that is too generic in a time where we are getting so many unique stories, especially this year. While I do have my qualms with this movie it is great that it is an original story, I would recommend this movie if you just wanted to have an easy watch and to have a good time. I would say though, however, you do not need to go out of your way to see it anytime soon. 

Review Courtesy of Jacob Diedenhofer

Feature Image Courtesy of TIFF and SSS Entertainment