Review: Rosalie

Director:  Stéphanie Di Giusto

Stars:  Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Benoît Magimel, Benjamin Biolay

Stéphanie Di Giusto’s Rosalie hasn’t gathered an awful lot of momentum since its Cannes debut last year, and now – over 12 months later – it arrives in the UK via Picturehouse’s distribution arm with something approaching an inauspicious shrug. On paper there ought to be plenty here to celebrate and get excited about. Telling the story of a bearded woman in provincial France in the late 19th century (loosely inspired by the life of Clémentine Delait), there’s certainly the potential for something that handsomely skewers gender conventions through the lens of the prestige period drama (one of France’s cosiest and possibly most conservative exports).

For a little while this is certainly what’s offered. We meet the titular Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) as she is being gifted by her terse but loving father (Gustave Kervern) to small town café operator Abel Deluc (the suddenly ubiquitous Benoît Magimel). They are quickly wed and her dowry passed on to local landowner/magnate Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay), to whom Abel is evidently indebted. Through all of this Rosalie appears like any other young woman being sold into marriage. It is only in the aftermath and on closer inspection that Abel is stunned to discover that his new wife is hairier than he.

The condition of hypertrichosis which causes excessive hair growth is not isolated to one sex, but the conventions of society mean that it is far more likely to be shunned and shamed when manifesting in women. Its both curious and frustrating how these patriarchal lines of acceptability fluctuate, and how fashions of any given decade or culture also diverge the benign from the provocative. Quite apart from whether hairy armpits or legs are considered in vogue, it’s the bodily autonomy being chastised or supressed that puzzles and aggravates; emblematic of far harsher intolerances found wherever tradition is fetishised.

In a move that’s somewhat refreshing, Rosalie appears to exhibit little shame about her ‘otherness’, and gregariously exploits it to eke Abel’s floundering café back into popularity. Even more surprising is how well she is accepted by the locals leaving – for a time – Abel himself behind the curve. His fear of his wife’s masculine hairiness betray a potentially complex and deep-rooted homophobia in Abel that he seems unable to reconcile. Thus Rosalie sets itself on an amiable course toward slow acceptance and emotional connection between the newly weds.

Except that’s not quite the path we’re steered down. While Rosalie is at its most abundantly enjoyable whenever its heroine is maximising the erotic potential of her gift, a fire at the local mill causes a seismic and frustrating wave of animosity against her which drives the film into its gloomier second half. Rosalie and Abel’s trajectory remains comfortably on course, but – having shown us a positive reception – Di Giusto seems to simply flip her coin for an extended third act of dismay, retaliation and, ultimately, suicidal ideation. I guess you can have too much of a good thing.

Regardless of the mode asked of her, Tereszkiewicz is wonderful in the lead, and makes the picture worthwhile even once it starts to flounder. By turns fearful, cheeky, emboldened and tender, its an emotionally available performance that feels truthful regardless of Di Giusto’s manic swerves. Magimel, meanwhile, is his dependable self; a gruff and barrelling presence welcome in any setting.

It’s something of a shame, then, that things seem to go off the rails so fully in the run to the end. Rosalie has one scene in particular that feels like a dream come true; a burlesque manifestation of inner and outer beauty that turns out to be a nightmare in which Rosalie is shot like game by her father. Distractingly scored to music borrowed from HBO’s The Leftovers, the film then shrugs across the finish line with visual metaphors that feel pilfered inelegantly from the same source. It’s a deeply unsatisfying conclusion that feels driven by melodrama and sentiment, miles off course from the movie we’ve been watching for well over an hour.

Having embraced the joie de vivre of being oneself for a pleasurable opening stretch, this fallback on (depressingly more realistic) tragedy just leaves Rosalie a little too bereft, feeling tonally confused, prone to extremes and overly simplistic. There are plenty of reasons to recommend the picture, not least in the performances and initial spirit of the piece, but these qualities simply aren’t sustained to the end. And even if that’s entirely the intention, it’s a tough sell to ask an audience to accept bitter disappointment as the point of your story.