Word: rosettas
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...Academy Awards. Past winners of the Palme d'Or--Cannes' top prize--have been sex, lies and videotape; Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now, all of which were almost completely snubbed when it was time to give out little golden statues in America. It should come as no surprise that Rosetta, this year's controversial winner of the Palm, is being released in the US with little fanfare, and probably to a limited run. It's a shame because films like this--ones with gritty realism, superb acting and the emotional impact of a punch to the gut--don't come...
...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...
What would you do for a job--a menial, drudging job in a bakery or selling clothes that never were in fashion? If you are Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), a teenager in today's depressed Belgium, the answer is anything. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's Rosetta, which earned this year's Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or and a Best Actress prize for Dequenne, is the close-up portrait of a girl for whom need has become obsession...
...medieval saints believed in Jesus, with a fervor bordering on lust, Rosetta believes in employment. Work is her religion: when she gets it, she does it harder (and glummer) than anyone else. When she has no job, she focuses on getting one so maniacally that she is in danger of destroying herself and the one fellow who befriends her. In the trailer park where she lives with her slutty, alcoholic mother, she methodically does the chores. For Rosetta, living is one job she can't lose. Unless she fires--kills--herself. And when she does decide to commit suicide...
...another country, or in lesser hands, a teenager's addiction to work could be a subject for comedy; the Dar-denne brothers turn it into tragedy and transcendence. But this dour, powerful film might be just an anecdote without Dequenne, 18. She invests Rosetta with the weird ferocity of an alien creature: a wild angel or a madwoman. This novice actress's task--finding the shading of realism in what could be a cartoon of misery--is made all the more harrowing by the film's intense, handheld scrutiny of her face in almost every shot. The purity of Dequenne...