Ros­alie review – very sim­ple and enjoyable

Beau­ty stan­dards are con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing. What remains is that, in some way, we will always find our­selves feel­ing self-con­scious about some aspects of our appear­ance. Our inse­cu­ri­ties at times can make us seek refuge, feel­ing ashamed instead of acknowl­edg­ing the beau­ty of our unique­ness. Stephanie Di Gusto’s sec­ond fea­ture Ros­alie advo­cates for a woman whose own inse­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges society’s stan­dards on what beau­ty real­ly is.

Set in 1870 North­ern France, Ros­alie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) is liv­ing on a remote farm with her wid­owed father (Gus­ta­vo Kervern). Long­ing for a child and her hap­pi­ly ever after, her father sets up an arranged mar­riage to local tav­ern own­er Abel (Benoît Mag­imel) who is drown­ing in debt and is des­per­ate for his marriage’s dowry. What Abel is unaware of is that his bride holds a secret – she has a ten­den­cy to grow facial and body hair due to a con­di­tion pre­sumed to be hir­sutism, typ­i­cal­ly relat­ing to the notion of ​‘the beard­ed lady’.

While the con­di­tion is not real­ly explained with­in the film, the sto­ry is loose­ly inspired by the life of the famous French beard­ed lady, Clemen­tine Delait. To hide her con­di­tion, for decades she shaved her face dai­ly to remove her­self from any poten­tial town gos­sip. As the pair take their vows and embark on mar­ried life, Abel is not best pleased when he dis­cov­ers Rosalie’s well-kept secret.

It’s clear that Di Gus­to and her co-screen­writ­ers are not inter­est­ed in telling a sto­ry about a trou­bled mar­riage but instead adopt a fem­i­nist angle. Instead of hid­ing her biggest inse­cu­ri­ty, Ros­alie decides to grow back her beard with the hope that curios­i­ty among the vil­lagers will encour­age pun­ters to vis­it her husband’s bar. We see her con­fi­dence grow­ing now she is liv­ing authen­ti­cal­ly, with many in the town (espe­cial­ly the women) quick­ly becom­ing in awe of her – even Abel soon realis­es his true feelings.

Her con­fi­dence becomes taint­ed when a rich local busi­ness­man (Ben­jamin Bio­lay) who Abel owes mon­ey too dis­ap­proves of her new found awak­en­ing. Di Gusto’s finest work comes when she is cel­e­brat­ing her protagonist’s new-found free­dom. The first half of the film pro­vides depth into an argu­ment about how judge­men­tal we can be in regards to how we and oth­ers look.

In an era where fillers and cos­met­ic surgery are enabling our youth to change their appear­ance, to remain on this path could have pro­vid­ed a strong mes­sage to its audi­ences. Instead, by its sec­ond act we see Ros­alie trans­form­ing into a typ­i­cal emo­tion­al, roman­tic peri­od dra­ma. Tereszkiewicz is a force as the title char­ac­ter, embody­ing hon­est and raw emo­tions dur­ing some dif­fi­cult scenes. Despite things at times feel­ing like two dif­fer­ent films, its mes­sage is clear: we are all dif­fer­ent, and that should be celebrated.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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