21 out of 30 people found the following review helpful:

Masterpiece of Cinematic Humanism

A Customer from London, 14th April, 2005

This is an amazing film. For those who are willing to think and feel it will provide you with a profoundly moving portrait of a fellow human being. Everything about Rosetta confirms its greatness; the cinematography is perfect for the project, script is solid, the acting excels, Direction and editing are just right. If you are incapable of wanting to feel, and prefer your entertainment of the anaesthetic variety (commercial rubbish), want to be told what to think (dramatic ends where all the plot wraps up neatly), and are only willing to feel emotion when a Hollywood Director manipulates your tear glands for you without you thinking, then steer clear. But if you believe Cinema is Art, and all art should describe the human condition, then Rosetta is a masterpiece.

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11 out of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Less Waffle = More Bite

AnotherNightIn from Merseyside, 26th September, 2004

The story is painfully simple - teenage Rosetta wants a job - a splint to bind her life together, as she struggles to keep her alcoholic mum from trading sexual favours for booze. It is in the telling that it achieves it's power.

The script (and it is easy to forget that you are not watching 'reality') is tightly packed with small and seemingly obscure incidents, which build layer on layer, not to any all-revealing pay-off, but to a patiently crafted authenticity that's mesmerising.

Lots of people will find it all too slow and relentless, but this bold and unflinching film goes out on a limb to tell a bleak story in a very muted way and as such it offers the kind of emotional experience you won't easily find elsewhere.

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9 out of 13 people found the following review helpful:

So you think you're having a bad day?

Jan from London, 6th April, 2004

Spare a thought or Rosetta a feisty independent young woman who is trying desperately to make ends meet while keeping her mother off the booze and from turning tricks in the trailer park in which they live.

Set in a dull, grey Belgian town, which only adds to the unrelenting misery, Rosetta will consider nearly anything in order to secure a job to get her and her mother out of the rut in which they find themselves. She is in fact quite a despicable character who you wouldn't want as a friend, let alone an enemy!

Acting aside, which is superb from Dequenne, this film will bring you down, whatever mood you are in. It should come with a warning!

Also, this film leaves more questions than answers, in itself no bad thing, though in this film it is irritating and you are left why wandering why you bothered with the film as you are no more edified at the end of the film than you were when it started!

Sorry, this film does itself no favours!

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8 out of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Realism is not necessarily entertaining

pesquera from inverness, 23rd June, 2004

How many times can you watch a teenage girl pull on a pair of wellies?
How about 10 times?

I have no doubt that this is realistic and no doubt that that the repetitiveism is a tool used for emphasis, however, it's dull, it tells me nothing. Life is hard, no doubt. Giving this film a prize was a major cop out. However, the girl who played Rosetta was fantastic.

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bleak but important film

MUNCH from , 22nd August, 2008

Rosetta the story of a teenager living in a caravanpark with an alcoholic mother who sells herself to the park manager for alcohol isnt the film you would seek out if you are in the doldrums. The running theme throughout this film is the refusal by Rossetta to bend to the pressures she is under and basically give up the spirit shown is admirable given her circumstanses and there is at the end the tiniest glimmer of ahappy ending. Good world cinema.

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bleak, real, Great

Mrtbuzzed from from Pontefract, 20th August, 2008

I usually hate anything arty and pretentious french tripe.. the French seem to do it with such expertise is all. this is a little of both it seems, But i love the way its shot, like the camera is struggling to keep up with her as she runs from place to place, puts her wellies on and shouts at her god awfull pathetic mother.. A really bleak side to the 'summer in Provence' imagery ive mostly seen in the past. It wont change your life or make you think particulary,,,, Hell, you probably wont be able to recall what happens in it in 2 weeks, Because it is in itself, so Ordinary Also, watch The Son if you like this, same Sh*t different day

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miserable !

gail44 from from bedford, 7th July, 2008

This was miserable ! We couln't watch all the way through

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Rubbish

Vanessa from Birmingham, 18th June, 2008

Absolute drivel. I even watched the directors' interview afterwards to try to work out why they made this. Turns out it was some patronising notion of a postmodernist attempt to engage with an individual and her quest for survival in a challenging life. Bollocks. If you like watching this poor girl lose her job, get chased around by a man on a scooter and let down by her mother repeatedly then you must be more of a postmodern sadist than I am.

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