Following her Best Actress win at Cannes Film Festival last year, we knew great things were destined for Renate Reinsve, but the question of what The Worst Person in the World star will do next was up in the air. Now, it’s finally been announced.
Deadline reports Reinsve will star alongside Lily-Rose Depp and Squid Game breakout Hoyeon Jung in The Governess, the second feature from Joe Talbot (The Last Black Man in San Francisco). Reteaming with A24, the film is an adaptation of Anne Serre’s 2018 novel, following “three rebellious governesses who upend the household they work in—inspiriting the minds of the boys in their care, igniting the imaginations of the bohemian couple who employ them and abandoning their charges for erotic adventures.”
Adapted by Talbot and Olivia Gatwood, see the book’s full synopsis below via Amazon:
In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book’s “deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.”
Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.
As we await more details, listen to our recent discussion of The Worst Person in the World below and read our interview with Reinsve here.