Nina Hoss is cheated on in ‘Tár.’ But here’s why she’s not a victim. [Nina Hoss and Peter Larsen]
Nina Hoss is the sort of celebrity that Americans love to take the word of. Since she began her career as a model, she has been photographed by Bruce Weber, Bruce Weber again, and, now that she’s an author, she’s photographed by Peter Larson. She’s also starred in one of the most successful movies of the 1990s, The Shipping News.
But the one thing that Nina Hoss is not is a victim. Nor has she ever been one. She’s just an unfortunate one, and she’s got a great story.
Hoss was the subject of a nasty, nasty book called Tár by one of her former lovers, Peter Larsen, who used to date her as an example of why women shouldn’t get involved with men like him. One example of their relationship was that they used to have sex with each other at their grandmother’s birthday party every year. In other words, it was a total fuckathon.
Anyway, after Nina Hoss won the Turner Prize for the best novel, Larsen decided to write her a kind of an indictment, telling her that he was not only sorry about what she had gone through, but also told her he didn’t care if she did or didn’t have a boyfriend. In it, he talked about the “wretchedness” of life with her, about how she couldn’t be bothered because everyone was always trying to break up with her. Her writing is, he told her, “like trying to catch a butterfly. No one wants to catch a butterfly,” not even Nina Hoss.
Nina Hoss was not in the least bit upset that Larsen wanted to tell her that story, because she actually told the truth back to Larsen, who made sure to tell the world about it. It seems he was just trying to hurt her and got caught up in the act, which is another way of saying he had