Rosetta

***** - a masterpiece

My first viewing of the Dardenne brother's Palme d'Or-winning Rosetta caused me to rethink my rating of their 2003 release The Son (Le Fils), and label it at "masterpiece" status. The instinct to label Rosetta as such from the get-go does not necessarily mean it is the superior work (even though it is), but rather the similarities between the two caused me to realize how the Belgian-born brothers had progressed from one feature to the next.

Danish director Lars von Trier concluded that the Dogme technique was created to breathe new life into the melodrama subgenre - but the Dardennes' highly physical camera has proven to be even more effective. To label Rosetta as a melodrama would be a simplification - in the same boat, labeling Trier's Breaking the Waves as a melodrama would be simplifying it as well. But, despite the "neorealism" and narrative reworkings of the Dardenne pictures - or the political and/or religious elements of Trier's - each respective films have elements of melodrama at their core. I can't help compare the high physicality of the Dogme approach (used to its most melodramatic in Susanne Bier's Open Hearts) to that of the Dardennes - their camera doesn't move to just add realism to evoke emotion, it also creates elements that range from a sense of weight, to physical interpretation of emotion (in particular - anger, as shown greatly in Rosetta). Trier's technique, in comparison, feels less vibrant, modern and effective.

The three Dardenne features I've seen feature working-class characters, but Rosetta is the one that actually about the working-class experience. I use the term "about" loosely, because it intentionally really isn't "about" anything that can be officially labeled. Does Rosetta act in selfishness, or is she claiming her natural right to live a "normal" life through any means possible? Where exactly do the fits of rage and stomachaches come from? What was the purpose in ending the film in the precise spot that it did?

Those questions cannot be literally answered - but the underlying motivation was that of ambiguity, and genre-busting. Rosetta is an anti-melodrama, an anti-character study, an anti-"social message" film - just as The Son is an anti-thriller and an anti-"revenge" piece. Rosetta acts in almost complete impulse; there are plenty of spots when you think you have her character, or the "message" of the film, completely worked-out in your brain - only to have the Dardenne brothers to fully rework those notions. The film and its lead are essentially impossible to categorize as this or that, because of the ambiguity and impulsiveness.