Chase Infiniti Confirmed as a Star in TIFF's 'The Julia Set' — SkimNews
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- Niki Byrne wrote and directed 'The Julia Set' as her first feature, premiering it at the Toronto Film Festival with a reviewer calling her 'a born filmmaker' whose dialogue is as sharp as her direction.
- Chase Infiniti stars as Julia Fischer, a math prodigy freshman, in her first film since her breakout as Leonardo DiCaprio's daughter in 'One Battle After Another,' confirming her movie-star presence.
- Christopher Briney plays Pascal, Julia's teaching assistant and love interest, whose competitiveness and ego gradually toxify the relationship — a dynamic reviewers note has become a more loaded 'official no-no' than it was a decade ago.
- Supporting cast includes Nina Hoss as the demanding Dr. Zatlan, Jason Isaacs as Pascal's narcissistic mathematician father Aleksander Mandelbrot (with a chess scene the reviewer calls brilliant), and Gillian Anderson as Pascal's mother.
- The plot turns on the Putnam Competition — a real, century-old math test of just 12 questions widely considered the hardest ever devised — which Julia sees as a ticket to MIT, a school she was accepted to but passed up for a scholarship at her local college near her family.
- Carmen Ejogo plays Julia's mother, and Alex Dillard plays her brother Evan, who has Down syndrome — grounding the character's choice to stay close to home rather than attend a more prestigious school.
- The film includes Adderall abuse, a car accident, and gaslighting, but the reviewer frames it as 'not some moralistic cautionary melodrama' but a true drama about a brilliant person shaped by a relationship she wasn't ready for.
- Reviewer comparison: The film is likened to 'Good Will Hunting' in its convincing portrayal of a math genius, with Infiniti's Julia distinguished by wearing her virtuosity 'lightly' rather than with ego.
Why it matters: Byrne's debut plus Infiniti's follow-up to a DiCaprio-starring breakout creates a double emergence at TIFF: a director whose first feature already demonstrates dialogue and staging mastery, and an actress now positioned as a leading film talent rather than a one-off discovery. For studios scouting the festival, both names just moved to the top of the consideration list.
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