Rosetta's Chilling Portrait

The world's largest film festival, held every May in Cannes on the French Riviera, also doubles as a more refined Academy Awards. Past winners of the Palme d'Or--Cannes' top prize--have been sex, lies and videotape; Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now, all of which were almost completely snubbed when it was time to give out little golden statues in America. It should come as no surprise that Rosetta, this year's controversial winner of the Palm, is being released in the US with little fanfare, and probably to a limited run. It's a shame because films like this--ones with gritty realism, superb acting and the emotional impact of a punch to the gut--don't come along often. Power and pathos infiltrates a simple story of a young girl trying to attain the most basic of institutions, employment.

That is Rosetta's premise in simplest terms. From the opening hectic sequence, we learn that Rosetta has been fired, for no apparent reason, from her job working at a factory. From there she attempts to secure other forms of work, but is continually turned down. The search continues, eventually becoming an obsession in her young life, to the point that Rosetta loses touch with her mother, her best friend, and eventually herself. Fortunately, in examining the minute details of this deplorable world, the narrative begins to extrapolate beyond mere plot points, and becomes a searing indictment of the system that Rosetta attempts to indict.

Slowly, and almost unconsciously, banal daily events take on a greater depth of meaning, because not only is Rosetta poor, she and her mother live in a near-animalistic state. Rosetta earns paltry sums of money by selling repatched clothes to a local second-hand shop, catches fish with a crude wire-and-bottle and can only ease the physical pain of abdominal cramps with a hair-dryer pressed against her belly. The alcoholic mother is reduced to exchanging oral sex for rent and electricity bills, and the two live in a dismal trailer park ironically named "Le Grand Canyon."

So, as Rosetta attempts to join the ranks of the paid masses, it becomes painfully obvious that the system that she so desperately wants to enter is also the cause of her misery. Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (La Promesse) pull no punches in their commentary. It is not political, but in their frank, documentary-influenced auteurism, simply presented for evaluation. After viewing the debased actions to which the principle characters are reduced, the only conclusion is to condemn the establishment of work as the cause of Rosetta's suffering.

What bolsters this assertion is the immediate clarity of Rosetta's uncompromisingly bleak vision of the title character's world. In their sophomore outing, the Dardennes have made an art of stripping cinema down to its bare bones. There are no designed interiors--the entire film was shot using locations in the Dardennes' hometown of Seraing, Belgium--or any other ornaments. The photography is dominated by shaky hand-held camera-work, lighting is sparsely natural and casting is reduced to four principal actors. It is initially frustrating and somewhat trying to a North American audience, used as we are to seeing the glossy celluloid images associated with high production values. Here we get grainy and bleached images. Similarly, no music accompanies the narrative to underscore the tension and wrenching moments; all we are given is the sound of gravelly footsteps, running water and the other minutiae. The mundane sounds pervade Rosetta's microcosm, because, being unemployed, that's all she has. Because the presentation is frank and honest, and devoid of artifice, we realize that this is a natural, unromanticized depiction of life experienced by society's "other half."

Though the narrative is depicted with a bizarre sense of detachment, Rosetta becomes completely absorbing and engrossing. In particular, fascination evolves regarding the heroine's character. Where other directors might have tried to arouse sympathy and pathos through various devices, the Dardennes refuse to present her as a victim; conversely, she is the antithesis: proud, fearless and dynamic. The sole artifice employed to make us fall for Rosetta is by making her the sole significant locus of attention. In fact, in a performance truly remarkable for a woman of 17 (no less a film rookie), Emilie Duquenne, in the title role, fills the lens in every tightly shot frame. Duquenne's performance is one of subtlety and internal calculation. Her vacant expression as she decides whether she should save her drowning friend is absolutely chilling, and the defiance demonstrated when Rosetta catches her mother in an aforementioned compromising position is absolutely remarkable, because she refuses to overplay the character. Such an extent of delicacy and nuance in portrayal is all too rare.

This, coupled with the fact that Rosetta appears in every scene, lends to what is initially bizarre behavior--running helter-skelter through a factory simply because she was fired. The film creates a sense of continuity, because the world, from our view, does not exist as the town, her work or anything beyond Rosetta's skewed perspective. Tight camera work creates comfort, which transmutates into sympathy, although the Dardennes do not actively court affection. Rosetta makes uncomfortable choices, but, instead of condemning her character, blame is firmly placed on her society.

To even attempt encompassing all of Rosetta's qualities would be a fallacy, since it is film of depth, weight and humanity. As such, it is not difficult to understand Cannes' award of the coveted Palme d'Or. Many who peruse these pages will, for lack of name recognition, pass over Rosetta, but for those whose interest is even slightly piqued, the film certainly merits attention. It will make you feel cold, it will make you feel empty, but it will make you feel.