Rosalie review – intriguing empowerment tale of a 19th

Based on a true story, this film presents hormone-disordered Rosalie, who has hair on her face and body, as a perky outsider in period dress

Here is an intriguing, if not wholly successful, attempt to create a hero for gender-fluid times and give them the full mainstream period-film trimmings. In fact, the first half of this account of 19th-century bride Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who has a hormone disorder that covers her body in hair, almost resembles The Devil Wears Prada or another of those perky comedy-dramas about a young outsider who refuses to be cowed in their aspirations. In Rosalie’s case, by both the brutish mill workers of the community she marries into and by polite society.

Director Stéphanie di Giusto has loosely based her film on the life of 20th-century “bearded lady” Clémentine Delait, transposing the story to 1870s Brittany. Rosalie is married off by her father, with a dowry, to cafe owner Abel (Benoît Magimel), who thinks he’s been sold a pup when his bride strips for the first time. Swallowing her humiliation, she bets her customers that, if she stops shaving, she can grow a more lustrous beard than similar fairground attractions. Already struggling with his feelings, Abel braces himself for the day of revelation, but stupefied and charmed locals pack out their cafe day after day. The couple, in debt to hooded-eyed estate owner Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay), may have found a quick financial fix.