Rosetta is a highly stylized, down-and-dirty, and truthful film in the vérité tradition. It was the second great film in a row from two up-and-coming Belgian brothers who began making a real impact on cinema in the second half of the nineties.

Historical Background: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes have worked so closely together in their cinematic careers that they jokingly characterize themselves as “one person with four eyes.” The older brother, Jean-Pierre was born in 1951 and Luc three years later in 1954. They grew up in the Belgian steel town of Seraing in the industrialized French-speaking eastern part of Belgium near the Meuse River. During their formative years in the 1960’s, the labor movement in Belgium was quite restive and schools were closed during strikes. Jean-Pierre and Luc witnessed many demonstrations and developed leftist sympathies. When Jean-Pierre moved to Brussels to study acting under the activist playwright Armand Gatti, Luc paid him frequent visits and sometimes performed in Gatti’s troupe as a nonprofessional. While Jean-Pierre worked as Gatti’s assistant for theater productions, Luc earned a degree in philosophy. The pair then decided to pair up and worked together for several months in a cement factory to save up for video equipment. The pair then formed a production company in 1975 to make documentaries for Belgian television. Their goal was to preserve the history of social activism in Belgium for future generations. The documentary Le Chant du Rossignol (1978), for example, dealt with the issue of resistance to the Nazis in the Walloon region of southern Belgium.

In the 1980’s, the Dardenne brothers decided to move into nonfiction films, beginning with Falsch (1986) and then Je Pense à Vous (1992), neither of which made much impact outside the festival circuit within Europe. Undeterred, the brothers gained international acclaim with their third feature film, La Promesse (1995), using a close-up handheld style of photography, stark realism, and an uncompromising examination of the working conditions of illegal aliens in Belgium. Filmed on-location in seedy neighborhoods, La Promesse clearly manifested the Dardenne brothers’ experience with documentaries. It won the Best Foreign Film awards from both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics.

That success was followed by Rosetta in 1999. Once again, the Dardennes focused on the topic of unemployment and its debilitating effect on the human psyche. This taut exercise in intense social realism won the Palme d’Or at Cannes though the choice was not especially popular with the festival audience. The film’s star, Émilie Dequenne, also shared the Cannes award for Best Actress. The fiercely focused style of Rosetta bore the undeniable imprint of the radical style of realism known as “Dogme 95,” exemplified by Lars Von Trier’s film The Idiots. Ironically, the appearance of stunning “realism” is achieved by the Dardennes through tightly controlled and highly refined filming and editing technique.

After this success, the Dardennes received offers to direct films with large budgets and star casts, but chose instead to continue making the kind of harsh stories with social bite, relating to the working and middle classes in the vicinity of Liège, that had become their signature. In 2002, they directed The Son, which was another critical success and art house favorite.

The Story: Seventeen-year-old Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic mother (Anne Yernaux). The mother is intoxicated most of the time and provides sexual favors for the park manager (Bernard Marbaix) in exchange for liquor. The mother’s only useful activity is mending old clothes which Rosetta then sells to a shot owner. Rosetta is disgusted with her mother’s hopeless state of existence, yelling at her “You only drink and fuck!” Rosetta wants nothing more out of life than a bit of normality and dignity. Her immediate obsession is to get and hold a job.

The film opens at some kind of industrial workplace where Rosetta has been working on a trial basis, but has just been laid off. We see her angrily striding through the corridors of this factory to confront the manager. She assaults the man and when he insists that she leave, she locks herself in a room to evade the plant’s security men. She is ultimately dragged out kicking and screaming.

Outside, Rosetta takes a bus back to the vicinity of the trailer park where she lives, taking a final shortcut through the woods to the park. She briefly stops in the woods at an old abandoned drain pipe and switches her work shoes for a pair of boots that she keeps hidden in the pipe. Over the course of the film, we see this ritual repeated each time she comes and goes from the trailer park.

At home, her life is even more miserable than in the outside world. The trailer in which she and her mother live is tiny. Rosetta’s time is occupied with trying to keep her mother away from booze, but her efforts are sabotaged by the camp manager, who is always willing to trade booze for sex with Rosetta’s mother. Rosetta fishes a bit from a muddy pond nearby, using a trap constructed from a broken bottle, and deals with painful menstrual cramps using a blow dryer placed on her abdomen. What we see is a sullen girl who is furious with pent-up frustration.

During the day, she job hunts, but is turned away at one place after another. She stops by a waffle stand as the owner and boss (Olivier Gourmet) stops by to check up on the young man, Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), who operates this particular stand. She asks the boss if he has any openings, but he doesn’t. Riquet takes some interest in Rosetta and tries to engage her in conversation, but Rosetta is too preoccupied with her effort to survive to be interested in anything as banal as friendly conversation.

Riquet, who rides a small motorcycle, shows up at the campground, much to Rosetta’s surprise. Having just come from an altercation with her mother and the camp manager and disliking Riquet’s initiative, she confronts him, demanding to know how he learned where she lives, and pushes him to the ground. The confrontation turns into a bit of a wrestling match and it is not until Riquet has her pinned to the ground that he is able to deliver his message: his boss has a job for Rosetta. Although one reviewer refers to this scene as an “attempted rape”, that is an absurd interpretation.

Rosetta learns how to make the waffles and is a willing employee. She is able to pay the rent for the trailer site and get the water turned back on. She tries to coax her mother into an alcohol rehab program, but her mother is so determined not to go that she ultimately pushes Rosetta into the muddy pond. All the poor girl can do is wail, “Mummy, it’s full of mud!” Her mother, however, has already run off to find some booze.

Rosetta searches out Riquet and he invites her in for a meager dinner, though it consists of no more than fried bread and a beer. She sees that he has a waffle maker and realizes that he is scamming his boss, selling his own waffles at the concession along with those made by his boss. Riquet, it turns out, was once a gymnastics competitor and he tries to impress her, a bit, with a headstand and even manages to get a smile out of her. Later, he plays a recording of himself on the drums. He offers her a beer, which she initially refuses, but later accepts and downs in a single swig. He tries to teach her how to dance but she ends up doubled over in pain as an attack of her cramps comes on. Riquet makes up a cot for her to sleep on.

Unfortunately, she is soon let go from the waffle job because her boss decides to give her position to his worthless son after the kid flunks out of school. She becomes hysterical and clings to a sack of flour as though it were a lifeline. She tries to continue doing her job as though that could prevent the boss from firing her. Ultimately, she has to settle for a (probably empty) promise that he’ll rehire her if another opening develops.

Rosetta is back to job hunting, but without any luck. Riquet comes by the trailer park and tries to help her with her fishing line, but falls into the pond. He is unable to get out and is close to sinking. Rosetta actually contemplates letting him drown, figuring that he is a competitor whose job she could get if something happened to him, but finally locates a stick and extends it to him and helps pull him out of the pond.

The next day, Rosetta goes past the waffle stand and Riquet offers to help her out by letting her sell the waffles that he makes on his own and keep the proceeds. She turns him down, stating that she wants a “real” job. After a bit of soul-searching, Rosetta decides to betray Riquet by going to the boss and informing him that Riquet is swindling him by selling his own waffles. The boss takes Rosetta with him to the stand and fires Riquet, giving Rosetta his apron and his job. She spends one day happily running the stand, dispensing waffles and drinks. Riquet, of course, wants to confront her, but she evades him and manages to get back to the campground.

In a cataclysmic moral choice, Rosetta goes to the campground telephone and calls her boss to inform him that she won’t be working for him anymore. Back at her trailer, she discovers that the tank of propane has run out and takes the empty tank to the campground manager to trade for a full one. While she is struggling to lug it back, Riquet shows up on his cycle and her cramps strike her as well. She collapses and he helps her to her feet. She says to him, “When you fell in the water I didn’t want to help you.” He replies, “You helped me anyway.”

Themes: We live in an era of increasing economic disparities, not increasing opportunity. Tax-breaks for the wealthiest keep money flowing into the stock market, but do not translate into job creation. Furthermore, those fortunate enough to find work discover that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, much less serve as a basis for upward mobility and pursuit of the so-called American dream. Unfettered capitalism without a social support net leaves many willing workers in economic despair. We can gather from a film like Rosetta that the industrialized countries of Europe are not without the same kind of potential for poverty, even when the will to work is strong.

It is noteworthy that this incredible film stimulated action on the part of the Belgium government in the form of what became known as “Plan Rosetta,” which tightened the prohibition against Belgian employers paying workers less than a minimum wage. It is hard to imagine a film out of Hollywood stimulating political action to alleviate some social problem in America.

Without being preachy, Rosetta ably illuminates the debilitating effect of unemployment on one’s morale and sense of self worth. Rosetta not only has a willingness to work, but a near obsession with finding and holding a job. The material security of a job has become fully integrated with her very will to survive. The intensity of her will to survive is made apparent by the tactic of magnifying the animal-like characteristics of her behavior. Twice, when she is laid off, she behaves almost like a feral beast, fighting tooth and nail for her livelihood. Later, we see her darting across a street on her way home, weaving between cars, like a squirrel. We almost expect her to be run down. Like a cunning fox, she hides and hoards items and hunts for fish. It is only when she is operating the waffle stand for a day that she finally appears fully human. The message is clear. Lack of employment opportunity is dehumanizing.

Two other casualties of the dehumanization caused by unemployment are moral behavior and capacity for love and friendship. Moral behavior is a luxury that only the reasonably well-fed can afford. The more desperate the plight of people, the more a society becomes a dog-eat-dog world. In the words of Bertold Brecht (Threepenny Opera), “First feed the face, then talk right and wrong.” Rosetta is so desperate for the security and dignity of a job, she betrays the only person who has treated her decently in order to succeed to his job. Some reviewers state that Rosetta is consequently not likable, but I guarantee that each of them would act the same in Rosetta’s desperate circumstances.

Rosetta is scared to death of the idea of friendship, not to mention love. After all, the only attachment she has in her life is her alcoholic mother. What has she learned? Attachment leads to heartache and misery. It is Rosetta that has to act as the parent in the relationship, playing caretaker for her mother at the age of just seventeen. As for men, she is understandably leery. She observes her mother whoring herself out to men. Rosetta’s father is nowhere to be seen. She is understandably afraid to death of Riquet’s proffered friendship and, we assume, hope for romance. When kids grow up without love and support from one or both parents, they often develop what’s sometimes called “hyperconsciousness.” They become two people, in a way, a child and a supportive parent, both sharing the same cranium. This is evident in Rosetta’s case when she is getting ready to fall asleep in Riquet’s apartment. She recites the following dialog to herself: “Your name is Rosetta; my name is Rosetta. You found a job; I found a job. You have a friend; I have a friend. Your life is normal; my life is normal. You won’t fall in a rut; Good night.” This is a gal who has had to settle for being her own best (and only) friend.

When Riquet shows up at the trailer park for the final confrontation, we see Rosetta’s ambivalence about friendship in full profile. She has quit her job as partial payment for having betrayed Riquet. She still is so in doubt of her capacity to genuinely care for another human being that she feels the necessity to come clean, telling him that she almost let him die in the muddy pond. He reminds her that she didn’t, thereby expressing his faith in her ability to learn to care.

Production Values: It took a lot of courage to build a film around something as ordinary in life as hunting for a job. It seems like such a mundane topic for a film, yet for any person going through the experience, it is, in fact, of fundamental existential importance. The willingness to deal with essentials of human life as opposed to unrealistic stories with glamour, glitz, and unnatural action is what most separates international cinema from Hollywood fare. Drawing on their experience with documentaries, the Dardennes adopt the perfect style to deal with the issues of this film – neither cynical nor melodramatic.

The script for this film is nothing short of brilliant. To begin with, none of Rosetta’s background or motivations is directly revealed. We don’t have to know how these poor souls got to the state they are in. Not knowing exempts the circumstances from being explained away as an individual anomaly. Viewers are forced to recognize that this story could be the story of any of millions of individuals anywhere in the industrialized world. The Dardennes never tell us more about Rosetta than we can see with our own eyes. It is particularly telling that the two directors and the star of this film actually had different takes on the meaning of certain individual scenes or actions on Rosetta’s part. That kind of ambiguity is enticing to intelligent, active viewers.

Secondly, by focusing on so many repetitious details of Rosetta’s monotonous life, viewers get a sense of how thoroughly this kind of emptiness in life strangles the human spirit. Another effective element of the film is that it makes us feel Rosetta’s pain and anger long before we know what it is all about. We are drawn into empathizing with her emotions before any of our views about welfare, unemployment, or alcoholism come into play. The film never deviates from the protagonist’s viewpoint, ensuring that the viewer’s perspective will remain with her own.

Rosetta is a work in progress – desperately imperfect but trying her level best to cope with the difficult hand that life has dealt her. Some reviewers found Rosetta unappealing but, for me, she is the kind of intense and vibrant person that I would care about and want to root for, even if I would be a bit cautious in my own dealings with her because of her volatility.

The only weakness of the script is that its rigorous lack of exposition through dialog may work against audiences not familiar with the background elements specific to the situation in Belgium. For example, many American viewers will not immediately understand that Rosetta and her mother are immigrants to Belgium from Italy and that the economic circumstances of immigrant populations in Belgium is generally woefully depressed.

The cinematography was quite distinctive for this film and perfectly matched to the film’s purpose and subject matter. The gritty look and the vertigo produced by the close-in, hand-held camera reinforces the sense of emotional instability. For those with a weak stomach, some segments of the film may actually be annoying or nausea-inducing because of the lack of stability of camera position. The film was made entirely on location in grimy locales familiar to the Dardenne brothers and the relentless naturalness of the settings and use of available light served to magnify the sense of reality. In the spirit of good cinema vérité, we are left with the feeling of eavesdropping.

Émilie Dequenne was rightly recognized by Cannes for her great performance in this film. She has since appeared in Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001). Olivier Gourmet had previous starred for the Dardenne brothers in La Promesse.

Bottom-Line: It’s nice to see a courageously unconventional film like this win the top prize at Cannes and even nicer to see an actress like Émilie Dequenne, lacking charisma but delivering a gritty, heartfelt performance, recognized with a Top Actress Award. This is a film that depicts life in all its rawness without squinting or turning away. It’s distressing that the film viewing choices made by Americans are based in large part on dollars spent for promotion rather than more profound considerations because a film like Rosetta is far more important than most of the Hollywood movies marketed mainly on the basis of entertainment value. There’s nothing especially artsy or intellectually demanding about Rosetta, but it still manages to deal with an issue of fundamental importance to many people. Rosetta is in French and has English subtitles. The running time is 95 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Belgium:

Farinelli: Il Castrato
No Man’s Land
Toto the Hero

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older