Halfway through Paul Vecchiali’s “Rosa la Rose, Fille Publique,” you might think you’re in a lush musical.
The luminous Rosa (Marianne Basler), a prostitute, springs around the streets of Paris’s Les Halles district in a blue dress and cherry-red earrings, cheerily taking on new johns — sometimes in pairs — as a Greek chorus-like duo of elder call girls bemoan their own shrinking clientele. But after a first act that ends with a giddy dance number and a tableau vivant restaging of “The Last Supper,” Rosa’s rose-colored glasses come off. It’s her 20th birthday and her life may not be so charmed as it seems.
Released in France in 1986 and now showing in a new restoration, “Rosa la Rose” was made by a filmmaker attentive to the queer and feminist rallying cries at the time.
His breakout film, “The Strangler,” depicted prostitutes in solidarity, tough and practical. In “Rosa,” the mood is initially jovial, with Rosa enacting her sexual freedom in a startlingly natural way — neither willfully provocative nor limned with secret shame. Vecchiali’s camera elegantly glides around her stamping grounds, showing her close-knit network of clients, co-workers, and pimps with carnivalesque panache.
But as the debonair pimp Gilbert (Jean Sorel) reminds her, a job is a job. Gilbert isn’t her boyfriend; he’s her boss. And the teenager who follows her around like a puppy isn’t in love with her; he’s just aroused. Rosa’s disenchantment with the ways of her world gestures at the harsh austerity policies of then-president François Mitterrand. Ultimately, Vecchiali tempers a romantic vision of the world’s oldest profession with hard truths about women’s agency under the auspices of the free market: “public” goods like Rosa are destined to be depleted.
Rosa la Rose: Fille Publique
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
The post ‘Rosa la Rose: Fille Publique’ Review: Lady Liberty of the Streets appeared first on New York Times.
