The World to Come

2020 Directed by Mona Fastvold

Two women who forge a close connection despite their isolation in the mid-19th-century American frontier.

Katherine Waterston Casey Affleck Vanessa Kirby Christopher Abbott Kim Ciobanu Daniel Blumberg Andreea Vasile James Longshore

Alternative Title

未来世界

romance drama

98 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by George Clark ★★½ 4

Directed by Norwegian director Mona Fastvold and set somewhere along the mid-19th century American East Coast frontier, “The World to Come” captures the life of two married neighbours as they battle hardship and isolation, while a bond between the two women begins to form, challenging them both physically and psychologically.
In the last few years, sapphic period dramas have become more common. With the release of 2019’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” and 2020’s "Ammonite", the first being an utter masterpiece and the latter being highly disappointing, “The World to Come” looked set to be another hit for the genre. Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby are beautiful together, crafting a rough-country love story, that kept me intrigued as the…
Review by justmiaslife ★★★★

this is everything "ammonite" tried to be and failed at...love vanessa kirby and i love this cinematography even more!
Review by Lucy ★★★ 1

SUNDANCE 2021: film #33
“there is something going on between us that i cannot unravel”
oh lord. this is poetic in a way but also reads like a horror movie. the chemistry between katherine and vanessa is real but it rarely gets a chance to shine, most of the narrative focuses on how sad and mundane daily life is and what a bummer it is that their lame husbands drag them down. it is what it is but just doesn’t work for me as a complete story, and with an ending just as bleak it might have made me cry but i also felt no desire to ever watch this in full again. i’m a little tired of sorrow
Review by Nakul ★★★½

Made with delicacy and well crafted in every respect, Mona Fastvold's The World to Come is a lyrical, moving and equally bleak & warm frontier period drama with a richly textured atmosphere and a finely detailed sense of late 18th-century life. It's less a story about love than it is about loneliness. Katherine Waterson’s voice-over was so soothing & pervasive and the narrative rely heavily on it to convey her emotional interiority. Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby are both magnetic with strong supporting performances by Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott. The use of film stock & natural light/setting and that haunting score by Daniel Blumberg creates such a sense of place & time and adds to it's feel a lot.
Tho I can see how the pacing might be frustrating to some. It's screenplay co-written by Ron Hansen, of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".
Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★★ 9

i don’t even know what to say, this has absolutely floored me..... you truly feel everything here, from the coldest chills of the icy winters to the delightful warmth of the emerging spring. everything comes together and is carried along so perfectly by its astonishing performances and soundtrack. the score manages to capture every ounce of feeling and does everything that a score should do in such a simple yet phenomenal way. i love how the story weaves its way through time and dances between the seasons so poetically, with each new chapter lingering or passing by fleetingly in tune with the heart and soul of its protagonist. there’s such a timeless feel to this film, one that is both devastating and beautiful. it’s delicate and tender and will stay with me for times to come.
Review by iana ★★★★ 1

everything about this is just divine! so beautifully restrained and yet i felt everything. loved katherine waterston’s very extra metaphors and christopher abbott doing nothing but looking hot. daniel blumberg’s score will inevitably make an appearance on my spotify wrapped. astonishment! and! joy!
Review by harlequinade ⚡🥂💪 ★½ 11

Ruining a film featuring Katherine Waterston & Vanessa Kirby falling in love and sporting beautiful hairstyles with Casey Affleck's presence? Isn't that a hate crime?
The film was dull and bleak, but this was just gross.
Review by AmandaTheJedi ★★★ 1

I just want Vanessa Kirby to talk to me in her American accent
Review by deah ★★

the way the whole theatre (of lesbians) recoiled when the words "produced by casey affleck" came up on screen
Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 2

As coldly drawn as an atlas yet no less capable of enflaming the imagination, Mona Fastvold’s “The World to Come” is a hard and brittle period love story that thaws into something much warmer — what its hyper-literate heroine would call “astonishment and joy” — as a merciless 19th century winter blushes into a most unexpected spring. Tuesday, January 1st, 1856. Abigail (Katherine Waterston) mourns the daughter who was taken by diphtheria a few months prior, and journals about a world that feels barren in the young girl’s absence. “This morning, ice in our bedroom for the first time all winter,” she reads aloud in voiceover, offering the first excerpt from an interior monologue so pronounced that Fastvold’s romance often…
Review by ♦️•Lily•💋 ★★★

I watched this for the plot (gay Vanessa Kirby)
Review by theriverjordan ★★★ 22

“The World to Come” inhabits such a bleak facet of existence, that even love cannot lift it from its burdens.
Directed by Norwegian Mona Fastvold, “World” captures an interlude in the life of two married couples in 19th century upstate New York. Lacking fulfilment from their respective husbands, the wives begin a romantic affair with each other.
Vanessa Kirby gives her second great performance of the still-young year in a film that cannot match her abundant talents. She wafts through “World” as a Raphaelite portrait that has turned its oils into flesh. Like the subjects of Burne-Jones, she is mythic; immortal in her spirit but physical in her earthly beauty. Her role as the wilful Tallie is the actress tempting…

Recent reviews

Review by ana ★★★★½

ivy - taylor swift
Review by Gabriel ★★★

- a lot to like, but the voice-over became tiresome to me almost immediately. the writing just didn't quite fit the bill for that. it's a shame because everything else is quite well crafted. the overall look of the film is great, as is the woodwind-driven score (reeds, babyyyy). it's just the constant and heavy-handed narration that takes up a lot of breathing room and nothing is given time to ebb and flow. the bleakness and dread is hammered on and not felt. my trouble is that i can't tell if the words are too poetic or not nearly poetic enough.
- katherine waterston is always great but she never seems to find quite the right project to get enough…
Review by Milda ★★★★

there's nothing more pure than love between women. also I'm not sure how many more films with tragic endings I can handle
Review by Kalil ★★★★

"When you walk into the room
You pull me close, and we start to move
And we're spinnin' with the stars above
And you lift me up in a wave of love
Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth?
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
They say in Heaven, love comes first
We'll make Heaven a place on Earth
Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth"
~ "Heaven is a Place on Earth," Belinda Carlisle
The World to Come (2020) is a sombre love story between women who live in secluded American woods during the mid-1800s. The narrative is guided by our point of view protagonist's soft, poetic voice in the style of journal entries, and the film's…
Review by Jarett Bonner ★½

Why does this feel like a hallmark movie
Review by camis ★★★★

nesse aqui me entregaram a corda já olha brito sinceramente que depressão do caralho vai se f4der
Review by clary ★★★★

honestamente. parti em pedaços
Review by Michelle Jaworski ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A cold and claustrophobic drama that's well-acted and gorgeously shot. It overly relies on voice-over—seriously, it could've done with at least 25% less voice-over—to provide any kind of character development during its many vignettes. While it tried to do its best to get the audience to latch onto its characters, I felt nothing—especially in its final moments as it tried to invoke emotion amid tragedy.
(Also, I could really do without the continued use of the incredibly tired bury your gays trope in my movies.)
Review by Lourdes ★★★

Cast Katherine Waterston in EVERYTHING, please.
Review by junior ★★★★

TW: Casey Affleck
Review by Paulius

An inferior version of Portrait of a Lady on Fire. I really like the voiceover thou.
Review by gabysavi ★★★

“but my life has surprised me by being far more ordinary”