In The Julia Set, Julia (Chase Infiniti) is a gifted mathematics student hoping to attend MIT. But to do so, she needs to pass the infamously complicated Putnam exam. Having impressed her TA, Pascal (Christopher Briney), Julia is invited to an elite and exclusive group dedicated to studying for the exam. The teacher, Professor Zatlan (Nina Hoss), is as tough as the exam.

Can Julia impress Zatlan and train well enough to achieve the impossible?

I’m not a maths person. It wasn’t a subject I particularly liked in school, and our teachers only made us dislike it more. I really enjoyed the maths in The Julia Set. It didn’t all make sense but that didn’t matter. I found the theories and formulae fascinating. I liked how passionate the characters were about their love for the subject.

Beyond the maths, the film highlights just how much discrimination women and people of colour face in STEM fields. Julia is constantly underestimated and expected to play second fiddle to Pascal. Her talents are completely overlooked because she doesn’t shout about her abilities. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, unfortunately, and Pascal’s maths heritage and constant talk about his abilities means he gets the attention.

The Julia Set also shows how insidious abusive relationships can be. Pascal is all sweet and understanding, always in Julia’s corner. Until things start getting tough, and Julia starts displaying her abilities more clearly. And then his true colours start to show. And they aren’t pretty.

I wanted to watch this film because of Chase Infiniti. We didn’t like One Battle After Another, but Infiniti was the one bright point in that film. She’s just as charming here; kind, sweet, helpful. She’s earnest, determined, hopeful, but also young and naive. I enjoyed watching her.

I loved Julia’s best friend, Erin (Chloe Bailey). She was such a breath of fresh air, with a loud personality, real dialogue, and simple facial expressions that said so much. The relationship between the friends was adorable to watch and I could happily have watched 90 minutes of just the two of them.

Jason Isaacs is wonderful as the self-important, self-obsessed math genius. He’s unbearable and aggressive, and intimidates Pascal. He has the personality of a million needles poking at a person. I love him in this.

Gillian Anderson is a wonder, as always. She’s the counterpoint to Julia’s naivete as well as Pascal’s bravado. She’s the woman we all look at and hope we don’t become. It’s a very unusual role for Anderson, who inspired so many women to go into STEM with her Dr Scully. And yet, she’s remarkable on screen.

It was fascinating seeing Isaacs and Anderson as an onscreen couple again. I’d seen them in The Salt Path at TIFF 2024. This film has them in a very different marital dynamic; quite antagonistic.

Despite my excitement to watch The Julia Set, the moment Julia begins a relationship with her TA, I knew I wouldn’t like this film. Sadly, it goes from bad to worse after that.

I despise the fact that this film moves the focus away from the mathematics and focuses on the romance-gone-wrong angle. The entire second Act, you’d forget that Julia was a mathematician, so busy is she trying to play house. We’ve seen films like this a million times, stories about women who have a gift but choose love over their passion. This film tries to show how women are forced to give up their gifts because of a man and the patriarchy, but then focus on the how that affects Julia’s talent! It’s like Mona Lisa Smile, another film I disliked intensely, but for maths. 

Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to focus on Julia’s gift for maths? To share the different problems she encounters, and how she solves them? We haven’t got films about maths, and definitely not about women in maths. That would have been the unique angle, not ‘young woman is in an abusive relationship’. Why reinforce that narrative?

What makes the primary storyline more egregious is that it feels like it’s made for people who missed every wave of feminism. It’s got the sensibilities of the 1800s with 21st century technology. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would Julia, a woman of colour in a STEM field, who’s clearly ridiculously intelligent, offer her equations to Pascal? Why would she give up credit for her work? Why would she prioritise this relationship with this stupid boy when she has literally everything on the line if she can’t sit this exam? Why does it take a white woman believing in her for Julia to make a move? Erin was right there, and I think she was wasted in this film.

I also disliked how much exposition there was in The Julia Set. I understand you have to tell the audience about the math problems but why would math nerds tell each other that? The conversations don’t come across as natural at all. It’s so odd. And that wasn’t the only exposition in the film, either.

The Julia Set may have had intentions to encourage women in STEM but this story might give people the opposite impression. This story is so bleak about women in STEM, that they will be alone, they will be expected to be wives. The pacing was slow, especially in the second Act. While the performances are good, this film should have been set in the 70s, not now.

Stay tuned for more reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival 2026.