Welcome to Rosetta's world
Written by Zoe
The shot I chose is at 00:37:52-00:43:17. The main content of this shot is the interaction between Rosetta and Riquet. The first thirty minutes or so of the film mainly involves two story lines, the first one is that Rosetta, who is eager to get a stable job, keeps getting fired, and the second one is that Rosetta takes care of her alcoholic mother. These two story lines have been crossed in the first thirty minutes, which also gives us a general understanding of Rosetta's life circumstances. However, the shot I chose shows Rosetta not arguing with the boss or involving a confrontation with her mother, but instead communicating and interacting with Riquet.
The first frame is a parallel view of the medium shot, showing the two of them sitting together in a friendly manner, eating toast and drinking wine. We can see that Riquet raises his eyes to look at Rosetta from time to time, probably because of his curiosity and desire to communicate with Rosetta. Rosetta, however, keeps her head down and eats her toast. Her head bowing just shows the timidity and inability to communicate in her character. But the opposite is their dress, the director deliberately set up a sense of contrast in the image of the characters, Riquet wears a blue dress, while Rosetta is a conspicuous orange. In general, blue will be associated with sadness and other negative emotions, while orange will make people feel alive. Such a contrast between the characters better set off Rosetta's negative.
At the same time, we can see that in the whole room, by a wall will be divided into two visual space, Rosetta in the darker space on the right side of the picture, while Riquet but in the left side of the bright background, which also reflects the current state of mind of the main characters. The color of the clothes mentioned above, and the contrast between light and dark in the background we can see that this shot brings the contrast of colors to the extreme.
At here, Rosetta asks Riquet for a bottle of wine to drink, and then Rosetta drinks all the beer in one gulp, from Riquet's nose rubbing action can be seen in the face of Rosetta this behavior does not know the measures. During this period the camera leaned to the right, we can clearly feel Rosetta's picture accounted for more, which also gives the audience a sense of oppression, will Rosetta's behavior magnified.
After the drink, Riquet pulls Rosetta and says he wants to dance with her. Here we can note that the music for the film's environment to set the role. The background music is a drum-heavy, relaxed and upbeat instrument that sounds great for dancing and fits Riquet's characterization as a man who has his own interests. The music here is also played realistically in the scenes, not post-edited and inserted, which also adds a sense of authenticity and naturalness to the film.
Rosetta's body movements as always show no measure and resistance. She not only lowers her head, but also clenches her hands into fists, a tendency to protect herself. While the frame of medium shot captures the interaction of two people as a whole to the greatest extent. The shot is basically parallel to them, which makes their actions full of authenticity and simplicity, because the director is just recording.
After that, probably due to Riquet's proactive drive, Rosetta gradually opens herself up and starts to have some interaction with Riquet. In the gray light, we could even see the corners of Rosetta's mouth slightly raised. We can also notice that Riquet's interaction with Rosetta is getting closer and closer after he finds out that Rosetta is not very resistant and resists dancing with him, and their bodies are getting closer and close. Dim lighting also adds a hazy beauty to the environment.
While the audience thought Rosetta is trying to drop her guard, she bends down and covers her stomach without a word. Retreat back to the door with very little light, at this point in the frame again only the Rosetta, frame used Medium long shot, the Rosetta's painful feelings magnified at the same time also let me see her movements, the director did not tell everyone straightforwardly Rosetta refused to dance reason but also let us have a evidence to guess.
Until Rosetta turns around and the scene freezes on the door, Rosetta clutches her clothes and runs out the door, Riquet also chases after her. However the camera did not follow Rosetta just stayed in the original position, the music in the picture did not stop, everything just happened suddenly. The director uses a smooth and regular composition, sight-matched camera groupings, and a combination of motion and stillness (Wu, 2012, p39), but there is a lot contained in the shot. As usual with the Dardenne brothers’ work the hand-held shooting in a fixed camera position for a long time, as Hennuy (2010, p127) said “In the case of Rosetta, filming was done entirely with a hand-held camera. The idea was to make the movements of the camera Rosetta’s movements.” In such a single perspective, we see everything from the screen as we see it in real life, without editing and superfluous post-processing. Everything happens naturally, without performance traces.
The reason why this shot was singled out by me is because I think here is to reflect Rosetta's struggle, before coming to Riquet's house, she just finished arguing with her mother, she tried to step into the life of normal people represented by Riquet, but after she tried she was still timid, because her own pain still escaped the world of normal people.
Bibliography
Hennuy, J.-F. (2010). The Wrestler, an American Rosetta: Marginality, crisis and realism. Journal of European Popular Culture, 1(2), 123–133. http://ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=77553955&site=eds-live&scope=site
Dardenne, J-P., Dardenne, L. Rosetta [Video]. Retrieved from: https://video.xjtlu.edu.cn/Mediasite/Play/8c61a8c80ca4479e801fedf27434489a1d
Wu, X. F. (2012). Cong Luo Sai Ta Kan Da Nei Xiong Di De Xian Shi Zhu Yi Biao Da. Dian Ying Ping Jie. /The Dardenne brothers‘ Realistic Expression from "Rosetta. A Movie Review (16),38-41. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFD2012&filename=DYPJ201216019&v=2ooJEc4MoEH8DOKvnxKadWhUuzK3b%25mmd2FreQRAZxKQNAHfJbX%25mmd2BQxUvsXrgsQB5sC%25mmd2Fa1
