Being encouraged to recognise your own brilliance can prove a cruel lesson when the person doing the encouraging preferred you when that brilliance remained safely beneath theirs. That uncomfortable contradiction sits at the centre of Niki Byrne’s The Julia Set, an academically minded coming-of-age drama that doesn’t rewrite the formula but finds enough intelligence and emotional truth within it to earn a passing grade.
Following her breakout performance in One Battle After Another, Chase Infiniti continues to prove herself a compelling screen presence as Julia, a naturally gifted mathematician beginning her freshman year at the fictional GBU. Despite having the ability to attend a more prestigious institution, Julia has chosen to remain close to home, partly because of her relationship with her older brother Evan (Alex Dillard), who has Down syndrome.
Julia’s considerable talent quickly catches the attention of teaching assistant Pascal Mandelbrot (Christopher Briney), who invites her into an elite study group preparing for the notoriously difficult Putnam Exam. Overseen by the intimidating Dr. Zatlan (Nina Hoss), the group represents an opportunity for Julia to turn her mathematical ability into something potentially life-changing.
Pascal has considerably more baggage attached to the endeavour. His father, Aleksander (Jason Isaacs), is a celebrated mathematician and Fields Medal recipient whose reputation quite literally hangs over his son, with the family name emblazoned across one of the university buildings. Pascal is intelligent, certainly, but his accomplishments have always existed in the shadow of a man who has made intellectual superiority both his identity and his preferred method of emotional warfare.
Initially, Pascal appears to recognise in Julia something she hasn’t quite allowed herself to embrace. Their teacher-student dynamic quickly becomes romantic, and for a while there’s an appealing sweetness to watching Julia loosen her grip on the purely academic version of college life. But as her abilities become increasingly difficult to ignore, admiration begins curdling into competition.
And Pascal becomes absolutely infuriating.
To Briney’s credit, that frustration is very much the point. He gradually strips away Pascal’s charm without turning him into a cartoonish monster. There’s something almost pathetic about watching a man who wants Julia to succeed until confronted with the possibility that she may succeed more than him. He doesn’t simply want to be brilliant; he needs to occupy the position of brilliance in their relationship.
It’s tempting to view Pascal purely as the product of his father, particularly once the film brings Julia into the Mandelbrot family home. Isaacs is wonderfully unpleasant as Aleksander, capable of making every interaction feel like an intellectual competition he has already decided he has won. Gillian Anderson, meanwhile, makes an impression with limited screen time as Pascal’s mother Anne, a woman whose own history offers Julia a glimpse at what can happen when continually diminishing yourself becomes indistinguishable from loving someone.
Neither this parallel nor much of The Julia Set is particularly subtle. Byrne’s screenplay knows precisely where it is going, and anyone familiar with coming-of-age dramas built around an unhealthy first love is unlikely to be surprised by its destination. Pascal’s jealousy escalates, Julia continues making excuses beyond the point where we want to shake some sense into her, and the film moves towards the inevitable moment when she must decide whether loving someone is worth continually reducing herself to accommodate them.
More interesting ideas simmer beneath that familiar structure than the film ultimately explores. Julia is a young Black woman from a comparatively modest background entering an academic environment where Pascal’s family name effectively functions as currency. He has inherited access, reputation and an expectation of greatness; Julia has the natural ability but remains accustomed to making herself less conspicuous. The racial, gendered and economic implications of that contrast are evident, but Byrne is more interested in the toxicity of their relationship than digging deeply into the systems surrounding it.
Thankfully, Infiniti makes the familiar material feel considerably richer.
She doesn’t overplay Julia’s intelligence or insecurity, communicating much of her evolution through glances, hesitations and subtle changes in body language. Watching Julia repeatedly make herself smaller so Pascal can feel bigger is infuriating, but Infiniti makes her continued attachment understandable. Bad relationships rarely announce themselves as such immediately, and affection, admiration, competition and resentment become tangled enough that Julia’s reluctance to leave feels less like foolishness than the painful inexperience of someone learning where devotion should end and self-preservation begin.
The Julia Set ultimately doesn’t break the mould of the coming-of-age story it so clearly belongs to. Its observations about ambition, privilege and expectations surrounding genius could have been sharper, and its romantic deterioration travels a road that feels mapped out well before Julia realises where she is heading.
But predictability isn’t automatically a failing. Byrne has made a serviceable, accessible drama about the danger of confusing love with self-erasure, and it’s easy to imagine The Julia Set finding an audience that responds strongly to Julia’s journey. More importantly, it confirms that Infiniti’s breakthrough was no fluke. Even when the mathematics surrounding Julia becomes complicated, the equation at the heart of the film is considerably simpler: Chase Infiniti is a star worth watching.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Julia Set screened as part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, running between September 10th and 20th, 2026. For more information, head to the official site here.
