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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
The cinema of French writer-director-producer Paul Vecchiali
and frequent collaborator of Jacques Demy is relatively unknown outside of his
native country. A co-producer on Chantal
Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and actor
in Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur, Vecchiali was a favorite of François
Truffaut who declared the director to be the ‘only heir of Jean Renoir’. A frequent director of film, television and
stage theater, Vecchiali goes back to the early 1960s, amassing a diverse
filmography of over fifty films often tackling heavier provocative subject
matter including but not limited to AIDS, various sexual orientations, religion
and capital punishment. Briefly dabbling
in pornography with 1975’s Don’t Change Hands, sharing a kindred
art-porn-provocative spirit of Polish maestro Walerian Borowczyk, Vecchiali
soon worked towards relationship dramas with an adult edge leading to his criminally
underseen 1986 drama Rosa La Rose: fille publique translated to Rosa
the Rose, public girl.
Picked up by Radiance Films in a new 2K scan approved by the
director (completed before his death in 2023), Rosa La Rose: fille publique opens
on the streets of Paris where the titular young and extraordinarily beautiful Rosa
(Marianne Basler) is a fashionable twenty-something prostitute with a large
clientele. Working alongside fellow
older prostitutes who are jealous of Rosa’s beauty but nevertheless like her
and showered with attention and boundless gifts from her pimp Gilbert (Jean
Sorel), Rosa is living a free-spirited happy-go-lucky life not dissimilar from
the nymphomaniac femmes strutting about your typical Tinto Brass film. But when she meets young worker Julien
(Pierre Cosso) and the unlikely twosome actually do fall in love, she doesn’t
know how to handle leaving her carefree cared-for life of sex-for-pay and quickly
embarks on a tragically self-destructive journey.
A character study of French prostitution that examines the
ramifications and weight of the way of life in an altogether different angle
than, say, Ken Russell’s Whore or Noboru Nakamura’s The Shape of
Night. Rather than emphasizing
duress or sexual assault, in here the danger is addiction to the lifestyle
itself and enjoying life by devouring it whole rather than settling down and
living it. Though featuring graphic
nudity in parts including exposed genitalia of both genders in sometimes
unbroken long takes, Rosa La Rose: fille publique is largely a dispassionate
regard for a prostitute struggling with her own identity, sense of happiness
and her lifestyle. Lensed on the streets
of Paris often at dusk but sometimes frolicking about during daylight hours by
two cinematographers Renato Berta and Georges Strouve in 1.66:1 with a subtly
somber electronic keyboard score by Roland Vincent, the film for all of its sex
and nudity onscreen is handsome and classy.
It goes without saying the film wouldn’t work without the
fearless and joyful performance of Marianne Basler. Herself a film director who starred in Andrzej
Zulawski’s The Public Woman and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris,
the actress is comfortable with the territory she’s wading in and when her demeanor
changes as her fairytale existence is challenged with coming to an end, we feel
her angst through the screen. Jean Sorel
as the pimp comes across less like your stereotypical creep and instead is a
handsome, classy and curiously nice man who seems to genuinely want the best
for his girls working for him, even throwing a birthday party for Rosa. Also noteworthy is Pierre Cosso in
more-or-less the Marlon Brando role of a mysterious but noble working man who
sincerely asks Rosa to leave her life of sex-for-money behind.
Brilliant, multilayered and ultimately heartbreaking as we
see the bright radiant spirit of Rosa gradually wither away with misgivings as
she finds her carefree existence threatened by nebulous fears of the unknown, Rosa
La Rose: fille publique is a masterful tragedy realized by one of French
cinema’s most underrated and underseen provocateurs. A masterclass of daring acting, deft
direction and storytelling with often visually stunning filmmaking, it speaks
to a side of the French underbelly swept under the rug but held up for the
light here. With this 2K restored
blu-ray from Radiance Films, let us hope they have more Vecchiali planned in
the works: a most celebrated auteur in France whose reputation and oeuvre
largely remains to be seen here. While
the boutique label and film community have some catching up to do, Rosa La
Rose: fille publique is a terrific place to start up on one of French
cinema’s most surprising and life-affirming screen discoveries.
--Andrew Kotwicki
