Rosetta

The Dardenne brothers were not incorrect when they called their Palme D'Or winning work "a war film.". It is an unremitting portrayal of the most dire hardships, centred around Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), a young, spirited girl who battles with desperate tenacity to find a job and not so much escape as merely survive in her surroundings. Her life is a bleak struggle for subsistence in a world devoid of tenderness, in which her mother (Anne Yernaux), a quasi-prostitute more concerned with the source of her next drink than her daughter, stands as an example of the potential results of such continued deprivation. When she is befriended by a waffle vendor (Fabrizio Rongione), her prior existence leaves her unsure of how to act in the presence of an affectionate, concerned face, and when he attempts to teach her to dance, she can do no more than move jerkily without rhythm, uncomfortable in the arms of another human. The arisal of an opportunity to take his job forces Rosetta to confront whether physical necessity can ever be an excuse for the betrayal of others.

What follows is a superbly wrought piece of social realism, unsentimental in its examination of the dehumanising effects of poverty. For Rosetta and many others in analogous situations of the most dire physical hardship, their material deprivation leads to an erosion emotional and mental qualities. The Dardenne brothers' ruthless directional style, laced with close-ups and unpleasant details, tangibly conveys the dirt and drudgery of Rosetta's impoverished life. Indeed, the film is palpably cold, almost painfully explicit in its depiction of an uncaring world. In addition, Dardenne's performance, for which she won the Best Actress Award at Cannes, brings to life with understated excellence her fight, not to live well, but simply to survive by any means in a world that, for her, contains few hopes and no love.

The Dardenne brothers make no excuses or apologies for their presentation of Rosetta's base strivings, delivering a film that charts how far individuals can fall. Consistently raw and at times brutal, the film nevertheless proposes no answers, expects no sympathy, it merely conveys and evokes with a clear, uncompromising eye the bleak struggle for existence that is, for some, the total of what life has to offer. Harsh, but utterly compelling viewing.