In Rosalie's case, by both the brutish mill workers of the community she marries into and by polite society. Director Stephanie di Giusto has loosely based her film on the life of 20th-century bearded lady Clementine Delait, transposing the story to 1870s Brittany...
The couple, in debt to hooded-eyed estate owner Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay), may have found a quick financial fix. With her furry strawberry-blonde ruff, Tereszkiewicz looks like a winsome Sir Francis Drake and her run as a burgeoning celebrity is fun, with a metropolitan journalist hoovering up her story...
But it would have been nice to see Di Giusto run with this empowerment to make the film a more wanton, Orlando-like gender exploration. It opens up questions of appearance, femininity and conformity decently enough but also ironically goes down the conventional route as it frames Rosalie as a tragic hero...
The negotiations between Abel and Rosalie ring more truthfully, with Magimel lumb...
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