Rosetta

A review of the film Rosetta, directed by Jean_Pierre and Luc
Dardenne

I first went to see this film at the cinema because I knew it had
received the Palme D'Or at Cannes, but had no other information on the
film at all, so I didn't really know what to expect. My reaction at the
end of the film was that I'd seen something remarkable, and after
nearly two years I still think so. The story line is very basic;
Rosetta, a girl in her late teens, lives with her alcoholic mother in a
permanent caravan park outside a largish industrial Belgian town (the
town in which the director brothers grew up). As her mother is
incapable for most of the time, it has fallen on Rosetta to provide for
the two of them as best as she can. Rosetta refuses to sink into the
same mire as her mother who is still flirting with prostitution as a
means of survival, and desperately wants to find a 'normal' job,
however mundane, to furnish an existence that most people take for
granted. The film centres on Rosetta's brushes with employment and her
fury at various bosses who sack her when they find out her background
and the domestic scenes with her mother whom she variously cares for,
hates and literally picks up from the floor. The only hope is a local
young man who develops some sort of feelings for her, though even this
is compromised when she betrays him to steal his job. The directors
have used various methods to depict this. There is the strong flavour
of independent cinema and repetition techniques - it is a mighty long
way from Hollywood; some scenes are reminiscent of French
'relationship' movies like Betty Blue; others recall traditions of
British realism; and then there is the hand held camera. The repetition
is not boring, but lyrical; the 'relationship' if it can be called that
is extremely tenuous, so that the one time Rosetta smiles it stands out
like an explosion; the realism makes some of Ken Loach's work seem more
like Emmerdale; the hand held camera makes you giddy, but follows
Rosetta so closely, so intimately in all her brave gravity, that you
sometimes can't bear it. It would be impossible to see this film and
not be amazed by the performance of Emilie Dequenne, so convincingly is
she inside the skin of her directors' creation. You live every moment
of the dour, urban poverty of her life just feet, sometimes inches away
from her face, the camera whirling around her and pursuing her like
some helpless yet relentless angel.
The film is now available on video and I would urge anyone with an
interest in film to try and see it. It's anything but escapism but it
has its own raw beauty and offers a challenge to the way we think about
the more unfortunate consequences of our modern society.