Rosetta

I found this film quite effecting without ever straying into crass sentimentality. Rosetta is a young girl who is full of anger and yearning. She lives with a dysfunctional alcoholic mother in a caravan park. Little is given about her past but we can understand that due to her upbringing she has limited options available to her. Her desire to be find a job (any job) is both desperate and touching. For Rosetta the prospect of a job, even a job that many in middle class society (indeed the average art house cinema goer!) might regard as mundane and without prospects, represents to her a chance to escape the existence on the outskirts of society. Her drive however raises her above the mere status of victim, and it is a credit to the lead that she conveys so much of this, without it having to be spelt out.

One thing I did find a little disconcerting was the wobbly camera technique, don't see if you are feeling a little nauseous as I was however this is only a minor criticism. Its around 90 minutes and I think well worth the investment if you like a good character based movie.

Have you seen the 1948 Italian classic "Bicycle Thieves"? Yeah think that, pumped up on crack. This is "Italian neorealism" but set in Belgium a half century later.

The character "Rosetta" is a 16-year-old girl who lives in a camper with her nearly catatonic, alcoholic mother and is, as the filmmakers say, "a thin aluminum wall away from living on the streets". The fact that Rosetta is barely an adolescent who is thrust into the role of provider and responsible adult is a clever twist that further turns this social statement upside down. It becomes not just a tale of survival but terrifyingly a coming-of-age flick. Rosetta is socially and emotionally stunted, unfinished and handicapped. It's fascinating to see Rosetta (excellently played by Émilie Dequenne who won Best Actress at Cannes) attempting to grasp concepts of morality and ethics even though she has clearly had no guidance. There is a certain wild animal quality to her which you will immediately feel, and though she is tough and headstrong, she is still just a teenager who doesn't know how to dance, doesn't know what a "friend" is, and whose only reality consists of obsessively trying to find a legitimate job because she feels that's the coveted symbol of having a normal life.

In that respect, this film provides something we can all apply to our lives whether we're 16-year-old homeless kids or rising corporate execs. It's the idea that an obsessive pursuit of some type of social status, or social achievement, or even a relationship, is what we cling to as proof that we have a "normal life".

In a memorable scene our protagonist Rosetta talks herself to sleep by whispering, "Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You found a job. I found a job. You've got a friend. I've got a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You won't fall into the abyss. I won't fall into the abyss. Good night. Good night."

The camera remains very tight, almost claustrophobically so, on Rosetta throughout the entire film which exaggerates the microscopic world she lives in. She repeats routines and engages in trivial labors which are shown to us in almost tedious repetition, but the effect is powerful in conveying a sense of quiet, lonely desperation.

Throughout the history of cinema, there have been many films that document "how the other half lives" but most of them approach the subject as if we are spectators, almost in a patronizing or voyeuristic way that leaves us thinking after the credits roll "phew I'm glad that's not me" but here in "Rosetta" we get a sense that the bizarre life of this 16 year old outcast might very well be the story of the human race.

I saw Rosetta 3 or 4 months ago and it has stayed vividly in my mind. I would like to respond to two other commentaries here which compare Rosetta to earlier films.

One commentary compares it to Nights of Cabiria. But this is no pastoral fantasy like the Fellini. Another contributor calls Rosetta a fake Bresson. Presumably the point of comparison is with Bresson's Mouchette, and it's a good comparison to make, but I don't think it is one that diminishes Rosetta. Both Mouchette and Rosetta capture the flow of time and the characters' interior worlds realistically, but with realisms which are quite different. Mouchette's struggle is a spiritual one; Rosetta's struggle is with her physical conditions.

To make a comparison of my own, albeit an off-the-wall one, Rosetta's determination is strangely like the pure will-power that Lee Marvin demonstrates, barging into the Organisation's HQ in Point Blank. Maybe this forceful quality is what makes it a "war film".

The film-makers do the opposite of sentimentalising Rosetta's conditions as Fellini would have done. Arguably, they even go past Bresson, if you tend to a materialist rather than a religious point of view. They argue how poverty operates, how surviving it involves anger.

There is one moment when Rosetta slips in a lake and we understand exactly at the moment she does, that she may in fact drown. Not a moment that's easy to forget.

This is beyond the intensity of Gary Oldman's "Nil By Mouth", and Tim Roth's "The War Zone", while Erick Zonca's "Dreamlife of Angels" seems heavenly compared to the conditions presented in "Rosetta" by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

A down right harsh film. Unsparingly direct depiction of a young girl's poverty struggle. She is as tough as she can be. She fights vigorously to hang on to a job. She cares for her mother, a helpless alcoholic, and a seamstress when not drunk. Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne) is unrelentingly stubborn about receiving kindness, or food unsolicited. She has her dignity. A young person with so much burden on her shoulder and a heavy heart.

Things may be seemingly repetitive: again and again we see her crossing that traffic roadway, jumping into the bush trail; we hear the rustling leaves, the thumping of her footsteps; we watch her stopping by the hideout where she kept her rubber boots, changing her only good pair of working shoes; we follow her as she crawls through the wire fence loophole, arriving at the campers -- feels like a mindless routine. Yet, she's intensely single-minded on getting "a real job" (vs. moonlighting) and to have "a normal life", not to "fell into a rut". At one point, we can almost be happy for her to have "found a friend" in Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), a waffle street van vendor. She actually was able to peacefully sleep that night. Only to wake up and report at work to be told she's again out of a job. A devastating blow. Out of desperation, she did something that most of us viewers may not be able to comprehend -- but what do we know of her travails, who are we to judge her action?

It was not easy for her to have done what she did -- she did hesitate and took the risk. She risked her newfound friendship -- she desperately needed "to have a job". In a way, she has lack tenderness, love and warmth for so long that she's numb to human kindness -- she needs to be thawed! One has to be patient with her, to give her time and see through her tough surface and rekindle her heart. Trust needs to be rebuilt for her to continue living and tackle difficulties afresh!

This is no Hollywood fare. Dialogs are few. No exploitative, explosive, abusive scenes. We're given the bare structure of the story, and Rosetta, plus the sparing few supporting characters, held the movie steadily intact.

I saw "Rosetta" several weeks ago - and I still fail to recall any movie which could convey such an immediate sense of being pysically there, all the time along Rosetta's everydays' "war". We are bombarded and flooded with images 16hours per day, it takes great stregth of vision, of images, atmosphere and characters to grab at you this effectively in year 2000! Rosetta struck my as a very real encounter, with all the nonsense and ups / down of real events and life... It made me feel more of life, made me think of it more often and more intensely, it made me look into more eyes than I did before... Thank you, Luc and Jean-Pierre! and thank you, Emilie and all!