In October, Ms Reinsve’s newfound fame and ambivalence towards her were on full display at a party following the screening of “The Worst ...
In October, Ms Reinsve’s newfound fame and ambivalence towards her were on full display at a party following the screening of “The Worst Person in the World” at the Viennale, Vienna’s international film festival. Guests timidly approached Ms Reinsve – at the hotel bar, in the bathroom – to compliment her performance, as well as the gold Dior suit she was wearing.
Ms. Reinsve was friendly and chatty, but as the night went on she was drawn to the mix of salsa, pop and reggaeton playing in the ballroom. Eventually, with the help of a friend, she swapped her black heels for hotel slippers and hit the dance floor, from which she emerged about an hour later, her blazer in hand, the skin frozen with a faint sheen of sweat and disheveled hair. .
Existential questions
Ms Reinsve grew up in Solbergelva, a village in Norway which she described as more of “a road between two places”. She called her upbringing “complicated”.
“I didn’t have a good time growing up,” she said. Playing at a local theater became her solace.
At 16, Ms. Reinsve stopped going to school and left her home. She wanted to escape to Costa Rica or another hot country but could only afford a ticket to Edinburgh. There she had enough money for a week in an inn.
She tried to find work, but no one wanted to hire her. Eventually, the owner of the inn took pity. “He asked, ‘Have you ever poured a beer before?’ said Ms. Reinsve. “‘No.’ “But you worked in a bar? ‘No.’ ‘OK, but are you over 18?’ ‘No.’ He rolled his eyes and said, ‘All right, you’re hired.’
Ms Reinsve said she had always felt very different from other members of her family and that from an early age she had started asking a variation of the type of questions she still struggles with today. “Like, ‘How do people relate to each other and why?'” she said. “It kind of started happening because of my complicated relationship with certain people in my life.”
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