Rosetta
Tags: tragedy

Plot synopsis:
When her probationary employment ends, Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) causes a violent struggle against her manager and the policemen when she refuses to leave the premises. She returns home to "The Grand Canyon", the trailer park shared with her alcoholic mother who mends worn clothes for her to sell. Rosetta is also seen laying out traps to catch trout for food. Unable to receive unemployment pay and desperate for work, Rosetta goes around to ask about vacancies until she happens upon a waffle stand. She befriends the worker, Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), after an inquiry. Rosetta treats her period cramps with pain relievers and a hairdryer massaging the area.
Riquet makes an unexpected visit to the trailer park, startling Rosetta. He informs her a coworker was fired and thus she will be able to have a job. Her mother's promiscuity resulting from alcoholism prompts Rosetta to encourage her to seek a rehabilitation clinic so they can finally have a better life. However, her persistent denial causes her mother to run away. Rosetta decides to stay with Riquet for the night. During the awkward evening, she discovers a waffle iron in his possession. As she lies in bed, she tries to convince herself that her life has started to function normally.
At work, she is replaced after three days by the owner (Olivier Gourmet) because his son failed school, leading to another violent confrontation. Rosetta is moderately pacified when he tells her she will be contacted if an opportunity arises. She begins a new search for employment while keeping Riquet company during work. Later, Riquet falls into the water when he helps Rosetta with her traps. She watches him thrashing in the muddy water and hesitates before helping him out. Later she discovers Riquet has been selling his own waffles during business hours from his offer of an under the table job helping him mix the batter. After some contemplation, she tells the owner. Rosetta looks on as Riquet is thrown out of the stand and is handed his apron. Betrayed and hurt, Riquet chases Rosetta on his moped as she attempts to evade him. Eventually he catches up to her and demands her motive. She states she wanted a job and had no intention of saving him from the water.
Rosetta encounters Riquet as a customer when she begins her first day in his stead. She returns home to find her mother barely conscious and inebriated in front, dragging her inside and putting her to bed. She calls her boss and tells him she will not be at work the next day. She then turns on the gas to make an egg before bed. The gas runs out. She goes to the landlord to ask for another one. As she hauls the canister of gas with great difficulty, Riquet, on his moped, appears to circle around her. Rosetta walks a short distance before collapsing to the ground and cries. Riquet grabs her by the arm to pick her up. She turns around to gaze at him as she slowly regains her composure.

Review: The actress Emilie Dequenne, especially in the final scene of "Rosetta," really makes you glimpse why desperation drives some people to do the things they do -- although you may not totally understand.
The acting is so realistic, it is hard to imagine that the story is fictional and is shot in a documentary type style, where the hand held camera follows the actors, sneaks glimpses of their world in much the same way an ENG crew would on a story about poverty in a small European town where the economy is so bad there is little one can do to survive outside of desperate acts.
In this case, Rosetta, the young girl with an alcoholic mother, lives in a trailer with no heat, has to sell re-sewn clothes to make a meager existence until she finally sees an opportunity open up for a job selling waffles at a small stand in a high traffic part of town.
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.
I'd like to point out also the magnificent use of music in this film (you could hardly find two movies a year in which the music is not a nuisance nowadays, some directors should limit themselves to the music that comes from the scene itself -a radio, a piano...- ): it appears only once, and is a messy, distortioned home recording of drums, which serves the co-starring as an excuse to dance with Rosetta.
To those who are looking for a contrast in the movie, it's precisely this boy and specially this scene the ones that offer a way out.Do the people that need to know why Rosetta is like that also want to know why the birds attack the humans in Hitchcocks classic?Is it possible to construct such a character without showing, by repetition of sequences, the redundance of Rosettas' life?
i think, this movie is an intense experience in real life from the first to the last minute.maybe the camera is a little bit uncommen in the beginning; but very  soon you forget about that and you get drawn into the plot.
Rosetta believes, and has been taught to believe (ironically, by society) that the way that she can achieve this dignity is by getting a 'true' job - so much so that she phones her boss to tell him that she won't be at work before her suicide attempt.
Her victory is to see that she has a friend who was there all along, and this gives us a remarkable ending that is full of drama; packs a considerable emotional punch and is unforgettable, thanks especially to a stunningly naturalistic performance by Emilie Dequenne, who won an award at Cannes for her portrayal of Rosetta.
It is an unremitting portrayal of the most dire hardships, centred around Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), a young, spirited girl who battles with desperate tenacity to find a job and not so much escape as merely survive in her surroundings.
In addition, Dardenne's performance, for which she won the Best Actress Award at Cannes, brings to life with understated excellence her fight, not to live well, but simply to survive by any means in a world that, for her, contains few hopes and no love.The Dardenne brothers make no excuses or apologies for their presentation of Rosetta's base strivings, delivering a film that charts how far individuals can fall.
Rosetta is one of the most greatest productions about fighting to live in the cinema industry."life is a valuable gift so you should protect it by being as strong as you can."I think this is the main message of the film.Emilie Dequenne in the role of Rosetta would remain in the memory of cinema forever.She didn't speak that much but she was such a professional actress that showed all her feelings in her face.The scene that Rosetta spoke with herself before sleeping was fantastic.Technical features such as carrying camera on hand and using no music even at the end of the film,make us to believe that this is going to be a special documentary..
Verité to the max, the single hand-held eye of the film follows a teenage girl (Emilie DeQueene) on the fringe of extinction, poor almost to the point of homelessness, saddled with an alcoholic quasi-prostitute mother, desperate for work, for some semblance, any semblance of "normality," doing everything humanly possible to keep her head above water, at one point quite literally almost drowned by her mother.Life at the razor's edge, reduced to the basics, shows us what we are, what we are made of and need most but take for granted, forget as soon as we can.
and then the movie hooks you with a ferocious performance by Emilie Dequenne, who plays Rosetta, a teenager from the Belgian underclass coping with the despair of her predicament while dreaming of a "normal" life.
Simply,"Rosetta" is the best fin de decade European movie.I have to search my memories to find something vaguely recalling Dardenne's work:maybe Robert Bresson's "Mouchette" or Kenneth Loach's darkest hour.French cinema generally does not like those who have been left out of economic growth.Rosetta and the boy are on the wrong side of town.She lives in a seedy trailer with her alcoholic mother who's always ready to sleep with the first to come if he provides her with a bottle.She refuses charity,she claims dignity and dignity means work.To get a job ,Rosetta would do anything.Desperate,she tries to steal the boy's one:he sells waffles in a van.When he nearly gets drowned,she is tempted to abandon him to his fate!Later she becomes an informer and exposes his little swindles to his boss.Dardenne does not judge.He knows we are able to understand that,in this world,conventional moral has got no sense.Besides ,Rosetta confesses to the bewildered boy she wishes he had sunk.The form is absolutely stunning and fits the content like a glove:close shots,at best medium,but no panoramics at all,a tight editing:the director does not want us to take pity on this place where human beings feed themselves with waffles , hard-boiled eggs,or French bread (luxury),where they carry heavy gas bottles without even a wheelbarrow,where they fish in the river to get something to eat without even a fishing rod.Actually we know nothing about Rosetta but her first name.She is the embodiment of poverty as Victor Hugo's Cosette was in "les misérables" during the nineteenth century(the two names almost sound the same)."Rosetta" is the cries of the oppressed.A disturbing overwhelming movie..
Or others have said it goes no deeper than saying life isn't fair, or that the circumstances of poverty can reduce the poor to atomistic, asocial competition, where they are impelled to turn even on their friends.Well, that's part of it, but it misses the larger point.There is no effort in this film to portray Rosetta as "every girl" -- who copes just like anyone else would in her situation.
She doesn't have time for friendship for its own sake -- although she does allow one with the young waffle seller quickly enough when she figures he can help her somehow.There may well be better ways to go about escaping from Rosetta's situation than the strategy she purses here, but this film certainly graphically illustrates how hard it can be.
This technique, which shatters the illusion of privacy we all like to feel we have in our lives, is obviously designed to make the audience become more fully a part of Rosetta's drearily dysfunctional world and life.
Even though at one point we see her having a schizophrenic pep talk with herself as she is falling asleep  convincing herself that she will one day be able to lead a `normal life'  Rosetta is so emotionally cut off from the world and the people around her that we actually begin to question her mental health at times.
Now, with that style having been done to death by filmmakers from all over the world, the hand-held camera acrobatics of films like `Rosetta' serve more as a distraction and distancing device than the approximation of reality that the filmmakers seem to want to capture.
Here are my complaints: a film like this has to be saying something, and, in order to work, it has to make me think about the world around me, especially regarding our old friend, the Human Condition.
Like in Dardenne brothers films, in this one we witness how the main character makes a mistake because of hardships of life or because he/she is naive, then realizes the mistake and corrects it, eventually doing the right thing.
When we watch this whole process with the kind of fantastic and unconventional closeness - the engrossing & realistic Dardenne-style of close up shots - we actually fall in love and sympathize with the main character - the girl Rosetta.
While the story of Rosetta is indeed depressing, I found it to be compelling, and despite the sometimes nauseating camera work, at no point did I want to give up on the film and quit watching.
At least to me, realism requires that the story be captured in a way that is as close to actually being there as possible, which requires camera work that is willing to look away from the character, at least briefly, in the moments when she is interacting with something offscreen.
It's a bit much overall, although the performances, especially of the title character, is quite excellent, and the overall direction is good.Plus, I do like when directors let you figure out the story yourself.Altogether, however, La Promesse is the better, more engrossing, less obviously agitprop film..
The Dardennes brothers style of filmmaking is integral to the power of "Rosetta", it can look like pretentious art-house take-the-camera-and-shoot cinema verité but the content is so genuinely powerful that you can't accuse the form.
"Rosetta" always walks one step ahead of the camera, we often see her from behind going from one direction to another, this is a young girl struck by poverty and unemployment, living in a trailer park and witnessing the downfall of her mother, prostituting herself for booze.
And Rosetta, played by Emilie Dequenne (she won the Cannes Prize for her performance) rarely smiles, she's suspicious, tacit except when it comes to ask for a job, she's got the will, the determination but Dardennes' movies aren't filmed like melodramas but documentaries, which doesn't diminish their power in terms of pure storytelling.
And again, the directing is part of the film's greatness, it takes us to very uncomfortable and closeted places like the inside of a trailer, a small bathroom, a waffle stands, we all feel like intruders, put in a place that are no cinematically pleasing, but that's the point, the camera goes where Rosetta goes, to places cinema usually ignores.
Rosetta (1999), directed and written by the now critically acclaimed Dardenne brothers , is a film with a simple premise, a young and impulsive girl, looking for a job.
Rosetta is the ultimate prove that these two brothers of cinema are masters in creating intensely naturalistic films about lower class life in Belgium.
Like always though circumstances are working against her.The Dardenne brothers shot this film with hand held cameras and you can tell with the way it moves and sways as it tries to keep up with Rosetta who is constantly moving.
The Dardenne brothers as always do a great job of shooting the film with natural lighting in long takes often following the character almost if she is an animal in the wild and if they get too close she will run away.
The war movie comparison is really accurate : "Rosetta" is shot like the first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" and she spends her time running, attacking, retreating, attacking again, followed by an omnipresent hand-held camera.
The turmoil and tenacity of a seventeen-year-old girl, desperately seeking employment in the slums of Belgium is documented in 'Rosetta', the new film from those happy go lucky scamps Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne -- directors of the 1996 laugh riot 'La Promesse'...
For ninety-minutes we follow Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) around the Belgium ghettos with a cinematic intimacy that boarders on pornographic -- with handheld cameras pressed so close to her face that her breath fogs the lens, and one wrong step off the mark means the actors run the risk of physical penetration -- the film looks like the work of a demented Lars von Trier fan, only with the lack of subtlety and restraint usually reserved for Joel Schumacher productions.
Having recently watched Bruno Dumont's excellent 'L'Humanité', a film that mixed shocking sexual imagery and updated neo-realist technique to deliver a story and a character that gripped rather than griped, it worked in shocking contrast to 'Rosetta', which was an hour shorter than 'L'Humanité' but felt much, much longer.
Jean-Pierre Dardenne, one of the two brothers who authored 'Rosetta' was co-director a couple of years before this film of a strong documentary describing the life of the homeless orphan children in post-Communist Romania.
That film which became a repeated item on some European TV channels like Arte-TV when they need to say something about Romania seems to have inspired the Dardenne brothers in making 'Rosetta'.
The acting is very good and Émilie Dequenne is excellent as Rosetta, the 17 years old Belgium girl who can't find her way in life.
Certainly, this could be called "realist cinema": The entire film was shot hand-held (whoever was lugging that camera around, pulling focus all the while, deserves some praise), with several long takes, creating a jerky, eye-level world meant to place us in Rosetta's perspective.
Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne wrote and directed 'Rosetta', winner of the Palm d'Or at Cannes in 1999, a film about an adolescent girl who shares a trailer and her entire existence with an alcoholic mother.
Its simple story is put together with an intimate, naturalistic style: Rosetta carries the burden of what little is left of her dysfunctional family and aspires to get a job, her own place, to live a normal life, to find freedom; one day, she meets a young man who is willing to help her...
The heroine of this admirable but depressing French import is a sullen and troubled (both for good reason) teenager living in trailer trash penury with her alcoholic mother, and stubbornly pursuing what she calls "a normal life": defined as a paying job and someone to call a friend.
Rosetta (1999) is about a girl who gets excluded from the society and is trying desperately to get back in.Usually the films by the Dardenne brothers build around the moral choices their characters have to make.
So the films by the brothers are like pieces of life.Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) is a young girl living with her alcoholic mother in a caravan at an industrial area in Belgium.
Unlike the similarly themed dogme movement, or the more iconic works of Lars von Trier etc, the Dardenne brothers are unconcerned with changing the face of cinematic reality, but rather, take their cue from people like Ken Loach, Bruno Dumont and Robert Bresson; by creating honest, often-bleak works of film that take their character from despair, to hope, and sometimes, right back to despair, in order to give the audience a taste of a world away from the more comfortable social milieu we might be accustomed to.
Both films are here are heavily indebted to the naturalistic/realist work of Bresson and Loach, particularly films like Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Riff Raff (1990) and Raining Stones (1993); with the filmmakers presenting the viewer with a series of characters continually forced to the brink of despair, but desperate to pull themselves back.Rosetta was their follow up to The Promise and is the film that garnered the most attention when first shown at the Cannes film festival back in 1999.
The film follows the brilliant Emilie Dequenne as a troubled young teenager desperately searching the Belgium ghettos for work, whilst also having to put up with an alcoholic mother, a lecherous landlord and a series of ignorant civil servants.
If the point of this film was to show how pathetic a life Rosetta had, then it was covered within the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then the credits should have been running.
The desperate and determined Rosetta fights to obtain a job and find a way to obtain the basics of life for herself and her alcoholic mother.
You don't think "Wow, that's a good actress!" here because you face cold reality with a real life character.For those who liked the movie, I recommend Dardenne's previous film, "La promesse", which I (very) slightly preferred..
And, slowly the story of Rosetta, the young girl that desperately looks for work, gets bigger and will never get down again.
It is a good point that Rosetta wants to work and this is driving the film, without this will-power there is no story.
It's a French film and I don't know the main actress who plays the teenage girl but she's really great in her character.Basically her mother is an alcoholic who sometimes works but usually just drinks and is a drunk (and another problem for the girl to take care of).The girl desperately tries to get work.
But the effect of following SO CLOSE to Rosetta with the hand-held made it seem more like a suspense film at first...
Rosetta, like many of the Dardenne brother's films, opens in medias res, with a young girl confronting an employer about being fired.