Rose Review – Sandra Holler excels in her sordid examination of gender stereotypes | film

AAustrian director Markus Schleinzer brings the cold to his strange new film, a stark monochrome drama set in rural southern Germany in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. It’s a film that, despite its bleakness, is beautifully shot and as interesting as a thrilling TV series. It is a story of gender stereotypes, mocking the central mythological doctrine of patriarchal Christianity and depicting humanity’s self-invention through violence and concealment. The main influence is clearly Michael Haneke’s icy black-and-white film The White Ribbon from 2009, on which Schleinzer served as director. Schleinzer shares with Haneke an interest in leaving the audience with an intractable and unsolvable puzzle: a problem that cannot be linked.

The drama effectively combines real-life cases of women pretending to be men in early modern Europe with the well-known case history of the French false pretender Martin Guerre. Sandra Holler gives a wonderful performance as Rose, a young woman who has been pretending to be a man her whole life and is a soldier in that guise. She is dressed in harsh, shapeless clothes, and has the quick, crude, economical physical movements of an old soldier; An angry scar turned her face into a worldly and suitably unfeminine grimace. She says it was the result of a bullet that she now wears around her neck with a rope, a kind of unlucky charm, a reminder of her survival.

After the war, Rose arrives in what she claims is her native village to take over the family estate of an abandoned but potentially usable farm. By telling local tales that only a true pretender could know, Rose convinces the local elders (who have clearly accepted “Rose” as her nickname) and almost immediately achieves great success on the farm through her disciplined hard work. Moreover, she wins the hearts of the locals by killing an invading bear with her military rifle.

A wealthy neighbor agrees to sell a plot of land to Rose on the condition that Rose marry his daughter Susannah (Caro Brown), a simple and promising figure in cow piety and cottage industry. But if Susanna doesn’t get pregnant, the contract becomes void, and the villagers start talking. So, with some astonishment, Rose receives unusual news from the quietly cheerful and innocent Susanna. how? Who is the father? The question was asked only twice, the first time Rose asked it directly to Susanna, who did not respond. Rose does not pursue this, perhaps assuming some banal infidelity, and in any case grateful for the miracle of a virgin birth that has enhanced her family’s growing fortune.

The second time, the president of the court presents it to Rose during her trial. She had previously answered with a defiant calm reminiscent of Renée Jean Falconetti in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, but this time she did not. The judge also does not stress this point, perhaps not wanting to distract or complicate the prosecution’s case, or introduce potential new claims to the land by the biological father. He also did not want to risk, with Rose’s repeated refusal to answer, creating a martyrdom mystery around a defendant who had already become a celebrity among an agitated public. There will be another amazing revelation.

Holler’s quiet, powerful performance provides the film’s shape and muscle. It is clear that Rose has experienced thousands of crises and tribulations on the battlefield and has learned the balanced alertness needed to survive. Brown is also very good as the unexpectedly lively Susanna. This film is about the power and violence that occupies an invisible layer beneath the calm of the burgerlich, a layer that becomes apparent when it is challenged. It’s another stellar performance from Holler.