Spine 621: Rosetta

Lost in Criterion

Last week Criterion introduced us to the work of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne with a phenomenal film, but this week they follow it up with something somehow even better. From it's frenetic first few minutes, Rosetta (1999) is the story of a a young woman that believes she can find freedom, or at least dignity, or at least normalcy in work. But she, and we, live in a society that doesn't actually care about freedom or dignity or even, really, normalcy, at least not for the lower rungs of the economic ladder Rosetta lives in. It's sort of an answer to and modernization of Bresson's Mouchette (1967), but the Dardenne are much more interested in social realism than Bresson ever was.

Like last week's film, and many social realist films we've seen, Rosetta doesn't end on a hopeful not, but perhaps on the hope for hope and the promise of freedom and dignity that comes from community and care. We need that now.