Rose

While we eagerly await Sandra Hüller’s upcoming Hollywood projects (Project Hail Mary, Iñárritu’s Digger), the German actress proves that despite venturing into new spheres, her dedication to European independent cinema remains unwavering.

In the eponymous film, she plays Rose, a 17^th-century woman who passes herself off as a man. After fighting in the Thirty Years’ War and sustaining an injury to the face, the soldier wishes to make a new life on a farmstead in a rural Protestant village. The tight-knit community, as usual, regards strangers with suspicion. To settle a particular dispute over the use of land, the head farmer arranges a pragmatic union: Rose is to marry his eldest daughter.

The depiction of “home” has a longstanding tradition in German cinema: sentimental and rather idyllic in the 1950s, before filmmakers like Fassbinder and Reitz started conceptualising spatial belonging differently. Rose fits into this redefined understanding, where one’s place is shaped and constrained by social structures.

While most of its competitors for the Golden Bear take a more declarative stance regarding politics, Rose foregrounds an individual biography, allowing the audience to grapple with the revolutionary implications of her self-determination.

It is the third feature of Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer (director of the 2011 scandal film Michael), who acted alongside Hüller in Sisi & I a couple of Berlinales ago. The particular style he adopts here takes some getting used to. There is a harsh and alienating arthouse feel to the high-contrast images in black and white, while the off-screen narration almost evokes memories of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Even if marked by restraint, leaning towards stoicism, Sandra Hüller’s performance leaves viewers unable to look away.

Almost 400 years lie between the presented events and our time, but sadly their issues couldn’t be more pertinent to today’s day and age. Through its distant lens, Rose helps us regain a clearer view of the privilege of freedom and self-expression.