Film: Rosetta (1999)

Rosetta (1999)

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit late to the Dardenne Brothers work. I remember watching Two Days, One Night (2014) during my time at university and being blown away by the texture and immersion that they managed to provide, along with a strong female lead full of depth which is often so underrepresented in mainstream film. So, given the challenging and sorrowful situation we all find ourselves facing with the Covid-19 crisis and the shed load of spare time which I now have, I’m finally getting off the comforting and somewhat sanitised hug of Netflix and Prime to visit the plethora of films I have on my never ending list. I felt compelled to see what was one of the Dardenne Brothers most critically acclaimed films.

Much like Two Days, One Night, the film is completely immersive to its female lead Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), following her with clever cuts but mainly with what seems like a single camera. This is a technique which works fantastically in drenching you in Rosetta, to the point where you feel like you’re walking right behind her, as she deals with unsympathetic bosses, an alcoholic mother and a frequent pain in her stomach. A combination of steady shots and manic handheld whips and pans, with the addition of a purposefully dull colour palate, represent the rush of her days perfectly and communicate the plight of the underclass in todays society.

The Dardenne Brothers main theme is class and the representation of a disenfranchised section of society seldom seen on our smart tv screens. Each repetition of her day as she returns to her caravan park via a dull grey motorway and a muddy stinking (private) river- in which she tries to catch her nights meal stealthily- cements the horror of her situation, and the directors cleverly visualise in her Mother what Rosetta is doing everything to try and not become. 

The damning indictments of capitalism come through Rosetta’s life that we intensely observe, but also through subtle methods that often happen at the edge of our attention as a viewer. For example, at the waffle-making factory, we see the former worker Rosetta’s replaced plead with the manager to no avail as the visual is trained on Rosetta, which follows with the worker in the background glaring at Rosetta as she continues to work. The glare is so powerful in demonstrating through a small glimpse the magnitude of people in the same situation as Rosetta, helpless workers with no rights being thrust into deeper poverty with the flick of a nonchalant and dismissive bosses finger (the fact the boss is never named is an interesting distancing technique towards his character too). It reminded me of Italian Neorealism and something like Bicycle Thieves (1948), where the lingering shot works to infer a societal crisis that’s deeper than its main characters, helping the viewer to think both emotively and considerately.

The other thing the glare represented was the vicious dog-eat-dog aspect of society which capitalism encourages amongst the lower classes. In a world such as Rosetta’s where you fight so hard to get crumbs, your immediate enemy is the one which stands before you. This causes her to betray the lovable Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), the only person who consistently tries to help Rosetta and who cares about her deeply. The conflict that Rosetta manages to show in close-ups as she watches Riquet sink into the stinking river her Mother let her lie in, or as The Boss fires him, work like the aforementioned glare as a powerful tool for the directors to communicate what she has to lose to gain a minimum wage.

At the end of the film, when Rosetta takes the decision to ring in and quit her job, it thus becomes an act of powerful self-defiance at the real enemies above who thrive on exploitative labour, whilst simultaneously becoming an act of solidarity for her friend and fellow member of the class in which she is a member.

Overall, it’s a fantastic portrayal of class and an exploitative, unstable working world. 21 years after its release too, I can’t help but find it more relevant than ever with the rise of zero hours contracts and infrequently progressed probation periods that greet our immigrant workforce and underclasses - something which has effected thousands upon thousands of people in this current pandemic in the UK.