Rosetta (1999)
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 94m
Director: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Cast: Emilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux
Synopsis:
In the unemployment-hit northeast a girl who lives in a caravan with her alcoholic mother determines not to give up like her and fights tooth and nail for paid work.
Review:
One of a number of French films of the late Nineties to abandon all surface gloss in their depiction of the social underclass (Y-aura-t-il de la Neige à Noël? and La Vie Rêvée des Anges to name two). This one goes one step further in adopting an entirely first-person viewpoint, the camera forever at the protagonist's shoulder. This makes it hard to get close to her but also identifies the viewer with her lived experience. A bleak film, containing few moments of human warmth, but ending with a blackly comic frustrated suicide which also manages to be a ray of hope.
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 94m
Director: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Cast: Emilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux
Synopsis:
In the unemployment-hit northeast a girl who lives in a caravan with her alcoholic mother determines not to give up like her and fights tooth and nail for paid work.
Review:
One of a number of French films of the late Nineties to abandon all surface gloss in their depiction of the social underclass (Y-aura-t-il de la Neige à Noël? and La Vie Rêvée des Anges to name two). This one goes one step further in adopting an entirely first-person viewpoint, the camera forever at the protagonist's shoulder. This makes it hard to get close to her but also identifies the viewer with her lived experience. A bleak film, containing few moments of human warmth, but ending with a blackly comic frustrated suicide which also manages to be a ray of hope.
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 94m
Director: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Cast: Emilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux
Synopsis:
In the unemployment-hit northeast a girl who lives in a caravan with her alcoholic mother determines not to give up like her and fights tooth and nail for paid work.
Review:
One of a number of French films of the late Nineties to abandon all surface gloss in their depiction of the social underclass (Y-aura-t-il de la Neige à Noël? and La Vie Rêvée des Anges to name two). This one goes one step further in adopting an entirely first-person viewpoint, the camera forever at the protagonist's shoulder. This makes it hard to get close to her but also identifies the viewer with her lived experience. A bleak film, containing few moments of human warmth, but ending with a blackly comic frustrated suicide which also manages to be a ray of hope.