Rosalie
Take a look in advance
At first glance, Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) does not seem like the kind of potential bride who needs a dowry to attract the interest of men. She is young with blushing cheeks and beautiful blonde curls. She dresses, thanks to her own sewing skills, like a society-belle and not a working-class girl. You would think she could get better than Abel (Benoît Magimel), a gruff, shy café owner. But Abel is deeply in debt and agrees to marry Rosalie, largely to secure the generous dowry her father brings with him.
On the wedding night, it becomes clear why Ros...
At first glance, Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) does not seem like the kind of potential bride who needs a dowry to attract the interest of men. She is young with blushing cheeks and beautiful blonde curls. She dresses, thanks to her own sewing skills, like a society-belle and not a working-class girl. You would think she could get better than Abel (Benoît Magimel), a gruff, shy café owner. But Abel is deeply in debt and agrees to marry Rosalie, largely to secure the generous dowry her father brings with him.
On the wedding night, it becomes clear why Rosalie is not an average suitor: She suffers from hirsutism, unwanted, excessive hair growth in women on her face, chest or back. It is not visible on her face (she still shaves carefully) but she herself has accepted the hair on the rest of her body. When Abel he unbuttons her blouse he is greatly shocked by what he sees and the marriage remains unconsummated. Rosalie makes a drastic decision and grows her beard, suspecting that it will attract many customers to the café.
The bearded Rosalie is embraced by the community, in part because of her confidence and guts. She wants to be accepted, and not invisible, as women in this community are supposed to be. She defies conventions. There is bound to be a backlash to this, and Abel, too, must learn to relate to the confident Rosalie.
With Rosalie, director Stéphanie Di Giusto (La Danseuse) once again delivers a film about an exceptional woman. Di Giusto drew inspiration for this film from Clémentine Delait, a woman who at the beginning of the last century ran the "Café de La Femme à Barbe" (the café of the woman with the beard) in northeastern France. She became an example for everyone not to be ashamed of the condition.
One might imagine a film about a bearded lady turning into a raucous, profane vaudeville. Director Di Giusto takes an entirely different tack. Imbued with the light of rural Brittany, the film has the quality of a lost romantic-realist story: an inward-looking rural community, a rock-hard café owner, a woman striving to shake off prejudice.