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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

Rosalie review – underwritten outsider tale of body hair and bodices

Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Rosalie and Benoît Magimel as Abel on their wedding day in Rosalie
‘Watchable enough’: Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Benoît Magimel in Rosalie. Photograph: © 2023 Trésor Films/Gaumont/LDRPII/Artémis

Based loosely on a true story, this handsome, inoffensively bland, French-language period drama unfolds in rural Brittany in the 1870s, a grimly conservative place where difference of any kind is treated with suspicion and revulsion.

Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) knows this only too well. She was born with a rare condition which means that her face and body are covered in hair. She has concealed it from the world, with a diligent shaving routine and high-necked blouses. But when she marries Abel (Benoît Magimel), a grumpy, debt-ridden bar owner who is more interested in the dowry than he is in his new wife, Rosalie somehow grows confident enough to reveal her true self. And for a while at least, she is embraced by the community. But the Edward Scissorhands plot trajectory is inevitable, and the fickle locals soon turn against her.

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