Rosetta [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne

Overview

From the directors of La Promesse, this is a touching film about a young woman, Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne) who is having hard time trying to pull her life together. She lives in a trailer park with her irresponsible mother and goes out to look for a job every day, regularly facing the fear of being rejected and excluded. All she wants is a simple life, but what others take for granted seems to elude her. The only sympathy she receives is from Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), a marginal character himself, who runs a hot waffle stand. Through her, Rosetta gets a job at the bakery, but she betrays her new-found friend, who has been cheating the owner, to secure her own position. The fourth film of brothers Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne is shot in a documentary style; both directors worked as documentarists for nine years before making their first feature. Rosetta won the Palme d'Or at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival in 1999 (the first Belgian film ever to win the Palme d'Or). Emilie Dequenne shared the Best Actress award.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/14/2012
UPC:	0715515097512
Original Release:	1999
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:33:00
Sales rank:	11,870

Special Features

Conversation between film critic Scott Foundas and Filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne - New Interview piece featuring actors ?milie Dequenne and Olivier Gourmet; Trailer; ; ; Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Kent Jones

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Emilie Dequenne	Rosetta
Fabrizio Rongione	Riquet
Anne Yernaux	Mother
Olivier Gourmet	Boss
Bernard Marbaix	Campgrounds Manager
Frederic Bodson	Head of Personnel
Florian Delain	The Boss's Son
Christiane Dorval	First Saleswoman
Mireille Bailly	Second Saleswoman
Thomas Gollas	The Mother's Boyfriend
Leon Michaux	First Policeman
Victor Marit	Second Policeman
Colette Regibeau	Madame Riga
Claire Tefnin	Girl in Locker Room
Sophie Leboutte	Fired Woman
Gaetano Ventura	Store Manager
Christian Neys	First Paramedic
Valentin Traversi	Second Paramedic
Jean-Francois Noville	Hospital Worker

Technical Credits

Jean-Pierre Dardenne

Jean-Pierre Dardenne	Producer,Producer,Screenwriter,Screenwriter
Laurent Petin	Producer,Producer
Jean-Pierre Duret	Sound/Sound Designer
Thomas Gauder	Sound Mixer,Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

The Dardennes brothers' unflinching portrait of an impoverished young Belgian girl ranks with the neo-realist masterpieces of De Sica and Rossellini. Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne) is a grim-visaged 18-year-old girl who desperately seeks a job which will allow her to escape the wretched trailer she shares with her alcoholic, layabout mother (Anne Yernaux). A film of nearly unbearable physical intensity, it plunges the viewer into the life of the immiserated girl so completely that one forgets that any other world could exist. Shooting with a handheld camera, the directors provide no aesthetic distancing, no opportunity for reflection, and no emotional respite from the suffering of the girl, whose soul is so knotted with anger and loneliness that she's nearly as unreachable as the feral boy in Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage (1970). Her suspicious, awkward reaction to the sympathetic overtures of a boy (Fabrizio Rongione) who runs a waffle stand painfully reveal how much damage she's already sustained. Indeed, it's the film's most disturbing insight that even after Rosetta has secured a measure of the normalcy she has so hungrily sought, her inability to enjoy her new state suggests that the scars inflicted on her by a cruelly indifferent society are irrevocable. Dequenne is astonishing as this creature, who she has fashioned less a young girl than a vulnerable, wounded animal. Although the film has been compared to Bresson's Mouchette (1967) and the films of De Sica, it lacks the former's sense of Christian redemption and the latter's sentimentality. But the spirit of fierce integrity which permeates the film is that of unique and visionary artists. The winner of the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1999, the film provoked a change in Belgian labor law, which now prohibits employers from paying teenage workers less than the minimum wage.