Rosetta (no 31)

(Belgium/France 1999 94m) DVD2

Why me?

p  Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne  d/w  Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne  ph  Alain Marcoen  ed  Marie-Hélène Dozo  m  Jean-Pierre Coco  art  Igor Gabriel

Émilie Dequenne (Rosetta), Fabrizio Rongione (Riquet), Anne Yernaux (Mother), Olivier Gourmet (Boss), Bernard Marbaix (camp manager), Frédéric Bodson (head of personnel), Florian Delain, Christiane Dorval,

The cry of desperation from our eponymous heroine comes in the opening scene, an extended sequence where we see her march along the various corridors and warehouses of a factory where she has just been told she has been let go.  She cannot understand why they are letting her go, she’s a good worker.  The thing is, it’s the end of her trial, and she just cannot accept that she is returning to the ranks of the unemployed.  Finally, manhandled off site by security, we next see her by the roadside eating, wearing the same jacket and unflattering stockings that we will see her in for the rest of the film.  Welcome to the grim world of the Dardenne brothers.

            Rosetta is a teenager who lives in a caravan site with her alcoholic mother, and her only concerns are trying to keep her mother away from the booze and her slime-ball boyfriend, while trying to get herself a job that lasts and get a bit of security.  At every turn, it seems, her aspirations seem to fall flat, and her anger and frustration intensifies.

            Our heroine is undoubtedly one of life’s unfortunate, a very angry, aggressive, resentful teen too grown up beyond her years, her optimism, hope and sentiment crushed mercilessly underfoot by circumstance.  Her life comes to resemble a living hell, and each scene sears with brutal honesty.  Everywhere she goes, everything she does, it’s with a purpose, like she’s perpetually on a mission.  The mission is simply to get a job, but at every turn she is turned away, and one cannot help but feel sympathy for her.

There have been accusations made towards the Dardenne brothers that they have an obsession with modern urban poverty.  It certainly cannot be argued that all their major works have been set in such squalor, detailing lives where every Euro was to be counted and the bottom of the barrel was only a scene away.  Another accusation levelled at them is of making films too similar, not just in setting but in tone.  Certainly there’s nothing cheerful in a Dardenne film, but in such a setting, one must ask, should there be?  While it’s true that one could just as easily have picked La Promesse, Le Fils or L’Enfant, their other three seminal works, I go for this, chronologically the second of the four.  There are several reasons why I might favour Rosetta over the others.  Perhaps because it’s the antithesis of those endless American studies of trailer park trash teens, in that it doesn’t end happily and there’s not an atom of sentiment to be seen.  Or maybe that it so closely resembles in tone Bresson’s earlier masterpiece Mouchette, as anyone whose film is compared to Bresson is worthy indeed.  Or might it be another reason entirely?

            Rosetta isn’t an easy film to watch, indeed no Dardenne film is, as it’s very easy to adopt a self-righteous attitude to proceedings due to a lack of empathy for our protagonist.  I found myself endlessly moved by her predicament, and found myself hoping for an upturn in luck, even though I knew it wouldn’t happen and realised it would ruin the cumulative effect if it happened.  The Dardennes’ narrative control is as sharp as ever, while the camerawork of Alain Marcoen is vibrantly raw and edgy.  At its centre, meanwhile, we have a performance of astonishing, soulful power from its sixteen year old debutante, Émilie Dequenne, who thoroughly deserved her surprise Best Actress award at Cannes.  Since this success, she has confirmed her quality with touching portrayals of other mixed-up – but rather more cuddly – youngsters in Oui, mais… and La Femme du Menage, so that, while the Dardennes remain film-makers to watch, I think in retrospect that reason I was searching for to justify its selection might well be purely down to her.  As Peter Bradshaw said, this is “a film whose grace and lyricism has earned it, simply, the status of classic, something of real greatness.”