★★★☆ (4 out of 4 stars) Before going to bed at night, Rosetta said to herself: "Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You got a job. I got a job. You have a friend. I A friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You don't stick to the rules. I don't stick to the rules. Good night. Good night." This is a teenage girl determined to find a job at all costs. She is escaping the world of her alcoholic mother. The mother, a homeless living in a dilapidated motorhome, runs away from home shortly after the story begins, leaving her daughter to fend for herself. Rosetta saw the great abyss beneath her feet and avoided it desperately. The film unexpectedly won the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, and its star, Emily DeKena, also won the Best Actress award. It's surprising not because it's a bad movie, but because films like this—neorealistic, backgroundless, pessimistic, and simplistic—don't win very often at Cannes. Variety magazine grudgingly gave it a positive review, classifying it as "a miniature European art film from Belgium," not just European, but Belgian. At the beginning of "Rosetta," the heroine was fired, and we don't think it's fair. She beats up her boss, gets chased by the police, and returns to her mother's motorhome where we get a glimpse of her life, selling old clothes for money and sometimes burying things like a squirrel. She fished in a filthy creek nearby—for food, not fun. She befriends a kid of the same age named Ricky, who works in a streetcar that sells waffles (yes, Belgian waffles in Belgian art films). He likes her, treats her well, and maybe she likes him too. One episode follows another. We found that, unlike almost all teenage girls in the world, she couldn't dance. She has stomach pains, probably from ulcers. One day, Ricky fell into the river while trying to help her retrieve the line, and strangely, she waited so long to help him. She later admitted she didn't want to help him. If he drowned, she could get his job. After all, the local waffle king likes her, and if it wasn't for his idiot son, she'd already have a job. What happens next, I'll leave it to you to find out. This movie has a weird hidden power. It doesn't enlist our sympathy, and it doesn't go out of its way to portray Rosetta as funny, endearing, or sympathetic. This is a film about economic determinism about a teenage girl for whom employment equals happiness. Or maybe she thought so, she didn't feel happier until she got a job, maybe just because she never learned to be happy. When I watch "Rosetta" , two films lingered like ghosts in my memory, Robert Bresson's Muchet (1967), about a poor girl brutalized by villagers. The other, Agnès Varda's "The End of the World" (1985), tells the story of a teenage girl who travels alone and gradually goes from traveler to homeless. These characters are Rosetta's spiritual sisters, sharing her contempt for society and her desperate need to be seen as part of it. She will find a job. She will have friends. She will have a normal life. She doesn't stick to the rules. Good night.
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