Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Warning: This review is for The Julia Set, which is a film presented at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. There may be slight spoilers present. Reader discretion is advised.

Image courtesy of the Toronto International film Festival.

It is difficult to take in the extent of how intelligent a genius is, unless you are doing a disservice to their capabilities. Niki Byrne's romantic drama, The Julia Set, is guilty of such. A slight misfortune — yet a blessing in disguise on a frequent basis — of attending a film festival is that you do not know much about the film you are about to see. Most promotional signs for The Julia Set point to this film being about a math genius named Julia (played by newcomer firecracker, Chase Infiniti) who is about to take the hardest university exam of her life. However, once you watch the film, you will get a far different story — one where Julia falls in love with her TA, Pascal (Christopher Briney) and surrenders to his dark side. Julia's mathematical prospects seem to become a subplot from the jump. It's one thing for a film to go against my expectations — I do not think less of a film if it didn't go as I had predicted, as long as it accomplishes what it sets out to do. It's another for a film to not even understand its own potential.

Julia attends a fictional university: GBU. She could have attended the University of Chicago and MIT, but she wanted to be close to home. She is tight with her mother, and her brother with Down's syndrome. She has a best friend who she lives in a dorm with named Erin (Chloe Bailey). It is right at the first screen of the film that we meet Pascal, who grades a test that Julia just took and informs her of a club of elite math students that she is qualifiable for. This club is run by mathematician Hedda Zatlan (played by Nina Hoss, of all people): a strict, no-nonsense academic. Zatlan is preparing these students for the Putnam Test: the hardest math exam in the entire world, consisting of twelve nearly impossible questions (worth ten points each) and with the test lasting six hours (so half an hour per question). Julia accepts the invitation to Zatlan's class (and, additionally, Pascal's proposal to have dinner with him).

The Julia Set focuses heavily on Julia and Pascal's relationship, and marginally on the academic side of things. We see Zatlan's class occasionally, and the film never really gives us a sense of how behind or ahead Julia is. A major theme of the film is how Julia's romantic life is setting her back academically, mainly because Pascal winds up being a controlling narcissist. However, we as the viewer should still get a sense of how good Julia truly is — how else can we feel the damage that a possessive boyfriend has on their partner? For most of the film, the only way we can tell that Julia is a genius is because Infiniti is the kind of actor who can make you believe she is anything even without the most obvious cues. I somehow trusted that her character was an intellectual just based on body language, tone of voice, and aura alone. I already knew that Infiniti would be destined for great things, and The Julia Set only confirms it to me.

However, in the way that Julia feels held back by an awful partner, Infiniti is provided material that doesn't make the most of her abilities. I cannot compare the film directly to the quality of Hallmark projects, but it is close enough in tone that the H-word will come up in the back of your mind. There is a higher budget and slightly better dialogue than your typical made-for-TV romance; there are also enough zingers that got my screening's audience laughing. Even though there is a clear need for the film to prioritize Julia's gift, it does seem mostly passable as a romantic film that deals with how negatively a poor partner can affect someone's psyche, ability, and livelihood.

Even so, the film is brought down by its biggest flaw: Pascal. Maybe I have good intuition as a guy, but the very first second I saw him (so, basically, the start of the film), I felt like he was a worm and extremely unlikeable. I assumed that his character would be a minor one and an indication of the kind of attention Julia would get being an attractive woman in a highly masculine field (something the film even jokes about multiple times). However, that was not the case. Pascal continued to appear, and he became the main supporting character. He begins to exhibit signs of toxicity and anger when he crumbles in Zatlan's class (or, at least, he doesn't do as well as he would like in his or his father's eyes). At one point, Pascal invites Julia over for dinner to meet his parents, played by Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson. Isaacs plays a brilliant-minded asshole who continuously pushes his son to the brink of madness (so you can see why Pascal is the way that he is). Meanwhile, Anderson clearly represents Julia's potential future: a clever woman who has been stymied by her awful and manipulative partner. All of this checks out.

What doesn't, however, is Pascal himself. The further along the film gets, the more disturbed Pascal becomes. Additionally, the worse his dialogue and Briney's performance are. He becomes a smarmy, simpering sap with clunky, obvious, unrealistic declarations that feel written, not spoken. It would be one thing if Pascal was impossible to believe when he was at his worst, but, need I remind you, he wasn't believable at his best either; again, I thought there was zero allure to his character when he was meant to draw Julia in (I don't blame Briney for this, but, rather, the writing). He becomes a complete stereotype of toxic men without ever embodying how these losers get their way — am I to assume that someone as smart, independent, and capable as Julia could fall for this diabolical dweeb?

He never felt real to me, and because The Julia Set relies on his character so much, it struggles a little bit. What should have been the subplot winds up becoming the film's biggest distraction. When the film focuses solely on Julia, you see something more magical: a prodigy shining. All of the Pascal stuff feels like outside noise piercing into our whimsical film. I understand that this is the point: we are meant to see how held back Julia is by this moron. We are meant to feel her being prevented from greatness because of the selfishness of another. However, when the film starts hurting itself, that goes beyond a metaphor: that is a motion picture that is unaware that it is losing its audience. As we learn, though, Pascal is no Julia, and it is Infiniti who helps pull us through some of the weaker or more ridiculous moments — stick by Julia's side, and The Julia Set will be a decent watch (you just have to deal with all of the Pascal bullshit; if Julia can overcome it, so can you).

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.