Angela Aris
Trigger Warning: This film contains themes of suicide and self-harm.
Rosalie is the story of a woman with a hormonal disorder which causes her to be hairier than your ‘average’ woman. The film ultimately conveys that Rosalie is no different to anyone else—she simply wants to be loved. She marries Abel concealing her condition, and tells him her deepest desire is to have a child, that this child will love her unconditionally.
The hormonal disorder, which is not explicitly named in the film—you wouldn’t expect it to be in 19th-century provincial France—I sherlock to be polycystic ovary syndrome, commonly known as PCOS. This condition is not always as visually pronounced as it is in Rosalie, and PCOS today is a leading cause of infertility in women, underdiagnosed, and relatively common. For this reason and many more, it is not such a leap to say Rosalie is a film with great contemporary relevance.
The townsfolk in Rosalie are close-knit and this is reinforced by the contained scale of the film. There are few extras used and though we don’t meet all the characters in the town, it is made up of familiar faces. Places, such as Abel’s café, the River, the Bridge, and the Mill are returned to again and again. A sense of knowing the town intimately makes the dramatic elements of the film personal for the viewer, rather than spectacle-like.
The film Rosalie wrestles with the concept of a “bearded woman,” is it radical or not? The town swings from one side of the pendulum to the other, initially accepting Rosalie’s unveiling (with few exceptions,) to using her as a scapegoat when there is an accident in the town. It takes one or two powerful and psychologically unwell individuals to weaponise Rosalie’s difference as a way to feel more in control themselves.
The result of Rosalie’s excommunication is, unsurprisingly, the spiralling of her mental health, as she responds in part also to the trauma of growing up hidden by her father. Despite the trials and tribulations, Rosalie owns her hairy appearance with pride, playfulness, and even pleasure, in a rebellion which is deeply inspiring. Her steadfast dedication to living her truth is evocative of queer pride and living-out-loud, despite Rosalie not being a movie about a queer individual. Rosalie’s story documents her triumphs over, and struggles against, hatred, a fight she has no choice but to take up if she wishes to exist.
If you’re interested in the way gender norms structure society, feats of unbelievable resilience, and anthropological themes such as herd-mentality and mass hysteria—this is the film for you! At its heart though, Rosalie retains its innocence and sweetness because of the gaggle of earnest and brave characters which surround and befriend Rosalie.