The new French film “Rose” traces the various stages of grief as it follows one woman’s journey to find purpose after the death of her husband. A gem of a drama, the movie addresses elderly women’s agency and familial expectations, and it does so with such openness, with glints of humor and shimmers of music, that many viewers may wish to keep it with them long after they’ve left the cinema.
Our titular heroine is Rose Goldberg, a 78-year-old French-Tunisian Jewish woman living at Paris. Still quite beautiful, she sports a distinguished streak of white hair and a regal bearing. At the start of the picture, we see her at her husband’s birthday party, a grand affair complete with a band, a bunch of guests, and, despite his advanced age, a chair dance during the horah. We’re also given a glimpse of their three grown-up children, Sarah, Pierre, and Léon, who hint that their father’s health is not well.
What follows after the title sequence is another gathering, this time one of mourning over the Goldberg patriarch’s passing. In her apartment among the well-wishers, Rose seems to vacillate between sadness, denial, irreverent remembrance, and superstition. When Pierre, who leans toward orthodoxy in his observances, checks on his two young sons as they fulfill their roles as shomers, he finds them lying next to the body in a pantomime of death. Depicted over several minutes, the overall mood is relaxed and light despite the sorrow.
Director Aurélie Saada, making her feature film debut, is smart to begin her movie with group scenes as it highlights Rose’s social circle, the community she’s part of, and her tight-knit family. She doesn’t stop there: Next we see the funeral and then, after a few scenes establishing Rose’s loneliness and depression, we get a dinner scene with her children in which they worry about her mental and physical states after she walks into another room.
This series of ensemble scenes reaches its apex when Rose is compelled to accompany her daughter to a dinner party. It’s an easy-going, lightly intellectual affair in which the guests talk of love, sex, cinema, comic strips, and the connection between reggae and Judaism, among other subjects. Rose, though, looks awkward about her place in this circle of early middle-aged friends. It’s only when another elderly person arrives, a woman who is far from a shrinking violet, that she starts to loosen up, eventually leading the group in a Yiddish sing-along.
The party scene lasts for more than 10 minutes and in addition to acting as the narrative’s turning point — for Rose will now emerge from her despondency by buying lipsticks and driving again, among other activities — it serves as the film’s heart. What could be more mood-elevating, warming, and even transformative than a get-together over a meal and some drinks, the movie seems to be saying. Yet the meals Rose has with her family, including a Sabbath dinner later in the movie, aren’t exactly fun, though there are humorous moments.
Françoise Fabian portrays Rose, and the veteran Algerian-French actress charmingly defies what’s considered age-appropriate and motherly. With her warm yet piercing eyes, she’s still as seductive and perceptive as she was in Eric Rohmer’s classic romantic inquiry “My Night at Maud’s” from 1969. During a scene in which she flirts with a local, middle-aged bartender, the actress illustrates bygone behavior and ingrained repression fetchingly and intelligently.
Rose isn’t the only one going through a period of transition, and Ms. Saada also depicts how the Goldberg children deal with grief and with insecurities in their own lives. Living with his mother, the youngest Léon treats her as if she were his wife while generally being directionless and vaguely criminal. Married Pierre goes out with an old flame, while Sarah finds out her ex- is going to be a father again. Each actor — Damien Chapelle, Grégory Montel, and Aure Atika, respectively — gives a wonderful, sensitive, naturalistic performance, particularly when they interact with each other.
Ms. Saada envelops the movie in different kinds of music — Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, and more — much of which she sings herself, having been part of the French musical duo Brigitte. Dancing is also central to the story, and one can be cynical about its use in a movie that’s essentially about a widow getting her mojo back. Yet the dance scenes in “Rose” are central to the film’s idea of how music provides a rhythm amid the exquisite uncertainty of life.
There’s another convivial gathering scene near the end, with Rose meeting strangers at an outdoor cafe. Strangers are the only ones who seem to accept her new outlook on life, her refusal to remain in mourning. One even senses that she’s grateful for this renewal, despite her love for her deceased husband.
As she states to her children in the film’s final scene, an amazing monologue filled with determination and doubt, she wants to enjoy life as much as possible as she approaches its end. Ms. Saada holds steady on Ms. Fabian as her eyes seem to peer through the camera — at us, at the world, in defiance and entreaty.
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