Rosalie

France in the 1870s. Rosalie has a beard on her face and body; she has had it since birth. Her father offers a dowry to get her married and hides the fact. Abel's cafe is in debt; he takes the money and marries her. On the wedding night he learns the truth. Rosalie decides to stop shaving. She appears in the cafe with her beard. The town comes to look at first, the cafe fills and Abel makes money. Then the looking changes; curiosity gives way to anger and the town reaches a decision. Stephanie Di Giusto directs. Nadia Tereszkiewicz plays Rosalie and Benoit Magimel plays Abel. Benjamin Biolay and Guillaume Gouix are in the cast. It is a French production. The film screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and opened in France on 10 April 2024. The narrative is loosely inspired by Clementine Delait, a bearded woman of the early twentieth century who worked in her own cafe and sold postcards bearing her picture. The matter it treats is the decision to be seen; Rosalie stops hiding and pays the price herself. The film does not ask pity for her and does not leave her as an object of curiosity either. Abel is divided; he loves the woman and is ashamed of how the town looks at her. The narrative keeps the industrialising countryside and the factory in the background. The photography builds the period and the place in detail. The ending gives no coming together. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the plot thin, and the ending heavy. Who it is for: viewers who like French period drama and stories of exclusion. Who it is not for: it is slow, sorrowful, and the ending bitter.