"Austrian director Markus Schleinzer brings a chill to his eerie new movie, a stark monochrome period drama set in rural southern Germany in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' war. It is a film which, for all its grimness, is beautifully shot and as engrossing as a lurid soap opera."
"Sandra Huller gives a superb performance as Rose, a young woman who has been posing as a man all her life and has been a soldier in this guise. She wears dour shapeless clothes, and has the brisk, brusque, economical physical movements of an old soldier; a livid scar that has transformed her face into a worldly and conveniently unfeminine grimace."
"After the war, Rose arrived in what she claims is her home village to take family ownership of a derelict but potentially workable farmstead. By recounting local anecdotes that only the genuine claimant could know, Rose convinces the local elders (who have evidently accepted Rose as her surname) and almost immediately makes a great success of the farm through her disciplined hard work."
Markus Schleinzer frames a stark monochrome period drama in rural southern Germany after the Thirty Years' War. The story centers on Rose, a woman who has lived as a man and served as a soldier, whose military discipline and physical scar shape her persona. Rose claims a derelict family farm, convinces local elders with private anecdotes, secures land by agreeing to marry a neighbour's daughter, and wins communal esteem by killing a marauding bear. The film satirizes gender stereotypes and patriarchal Christianity while depicting self-invention through violence and stealth, with visual echoes of Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Sandra Huller delivers a commanding performance.
#gender-disguise #post-thirty-years-war #black-and-white-cinematography #patriarchal-christianity-critique
Read at www.theguardian.com
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