Word: rosetta
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...