Rosalie Blum

The French film Rosalie Blum (2016) is a low-key comedy that uses whimsical coincidence as a narrative framing device. Whimsy is an old-fashioned term that describes something playfully funny about nothing of consequence. Rather than plot-driven, this story is like a loose jigsaw puzzle of quirky characters whose paths connect by chance and whose lives become entwined. Part of the whimsy comes from the story being told from three different viewpoints that eventually converge to explain little more than how the paths came to intersect in the first place. Vincent is a balding shy downtrodden 30-something hairdresser dominated by his mother and emotionally still a child. By chance he meets middle-aged shopkeeper Rosalie and is perplexed by the feeling he knows her from somewhere. To fill his empty life, he begins to follow her and she soon notices his stalking. Rosalie asks her niece Aude to follow him to find out what's going on and she readily agrees just for fun. The story switches to their view of the adventure, and we see Aude and her friends as accident-prone bumbling detectives. Rosalie enjoys the attention as the characters continue to secretly watch each other until the game reaches it quaintly funny and inconsequential finale. A thin plot line like this needs added substance to make it work and this comes from characterisation and charming French village setting. Vincent is neither likable nor unlikeable, just innocuously ordinary and he plays this part to perfection. The relationship with his mother both humanises him and renders him hopelessly dependent. Rosalie is equally unfulfilled with a sad story of her own about an estranged son; she is sanguine about life and accepting of its disappointments. Aude is the spark that ignites the two hollow logs, exuberantly youthful and optimistic. Together with her excitable sleuthing friends they create several of the comic sketches that inject humour into an otherwise colourless tale. The narrative tension that sustains our curiosity comes from the hanging possibility of romance and our need for an explanation of Vincent's obsessive behaviour. All are loners, and loneliness is a magnet for meaning and attachment. Describing this film as a comedy is using the label in its most elastic form. There are many chuckles but few laughs: whimsy is like that. Quirky, soulful and curious are words that come closer to describing this modestly engaging tale about nothing much at all and the little-known actors rise to the challenge. The story elevates ordinariness to a higher plane and satisfies the curiosity it contrives with a simple yet charming finale.

I saw it at the French Film Festival in Sydney 2016. It is everything I love in a film: well written, original ideas, quirky, humorous, great character development, affirming relationships, satisfactory resolution but not saccharine. Each of the characters has moved on to a new place in their lives, and there is more to come.

France pumps out films of very high quality with great regularity....and the rom-com genre is a favourite. This one s a cut above the rest because it contains pathos without being clichéd.

The plot is divided into chapters, re-telling events from the point of view of the three main characters. I love this....each re-telling provides reveals which move the story along, and provide laughs.

Subtitles good - you can read them! When the French decide to be amusing, it doesn't seem to require much effort on their part. Families - you can count on them to drive you crazy. And then you don't seem to be able to help yourself - you find that you're making your own personal contribution to the craziness. But that in itself probably won't be funny enough - more likely depressing. Depression similar to that of sharing a jail cell with someone - any companionship is better than none at all, but not enough better.

In order to escape our folie de famille, we form what is called "friendships." These are usually less crazy than families, but not too much less crazy. So mix the two together, and the possibilities are endless. Some film-makers embrace this endlessness, and a good share of these film-makers are French.

But wait, there's more! What we call "relationships." Let's just start with boy meets girl - that should be quite enough for "Rosalie Blum." So there it is - by now you pretty much know what happens in this movie.

This is a world seen through the eyes of women. All blokes are weird. Women have to survive in this bloke-weird world. In order to survive, women have to become a little weird themselves. But what starts out as camouflage begins to sneak into the female brain, like a more-or-less benign virus. More or less.

Oh, you want some details? Well, a few details can't do much harm. Vincent is a ladies' hairdresser. A pretty glamorous guy, right? Wrong. He's bossed around by his mother, who lives in the flat upstairs. Not bossed around so much as terrorised. Motherhood in itself makes women slightly weird of course, but in this case it's more than slightly. So is Vincent trying to find a love-relationship that he can use to liberate himself from this tyrannie de famille? He's not very good at it. Women for him are a kind of Rubik Cube. Then one evening he's buying something at a convenience store, for his mother of course, and he finds the middle-aged woman who owns the store interesting. Perhaps he has seen her before somewhere. What does that mean, interesting? Well, he's a lonely guy. Attractive young women, even though he must spend some of each day doing stuff to their hair, all seem to be locked away in the cubical galaxy of Rubik. Maybe an older woman (anyone who is not his mother!) might be able to relieve the dreariness of his life? Nah. Why would she be interested in him? However she becomes a resource, like a character in a very long novel, who is revealed bit by bit to a reader who finds the characters in a novel to be (as they often are) more interesting than the tedious individuals with whom we tediously spend our days in what we like to call "real life." So he carries out "research." How does this woman spend her leisure time, where does she go, who does she meet? In the tedious world of real life this is called "stalking" - and guys, if you'd prefer not to discuss your behaviour with a couple of very humourless cops, you should avoid the practice thereof. A stalker! Maybe this Vincent is a serial murderer, cunningly disguised as hyper-ordinary, mediocre even. And he has a mother? Has anyone ever seen this mother? Norman Bates, he had a mother, didn't he! Maybe Vincent has... (the mind boggles).

You see, this store owner, Rosalie Blum, has a niece, Aude, and Aude has two best girlfriends. This trio of best friends, abetted by a guy (who is of course weird) are not as crazy as a family, but they're crazy enough. Endless possibilities. It's going to be one long giggle.

A tangled web of a movie which draws the viewer in with few hints as to how it will unfold. Covers all sorts of modern day themes such as love, loneliness, unwanted celebrity status, loss, humour...

The characters are fully developed and you get to understand and empathise with their backstory which is quite important to the plot.

There is no doubt the director and writers have quite a bit of fun with the audience but never at their expense. The film looks at events over a few days from the viewpoint of 3 of the protagonists in quite a successful manner.

Quite a lovely "little" story of everyday life and love.

This film was reported as receiving the greatest audience support in 27 years of the Alliance Françoise film festival, and while it's an entertainingly competent film, I'm not sure it's in the quarter-of- a-century-best type realm.

It's a tale of mid 30s hairdresser Vincent's obsession with slightly older Rosalie, and the unlikely series of circumstances which both led to his feelings and unfold with the film's narrative. The involvement of Rosalie's niece Aude (Alice Isaaz) and her two friends brings both the three sad sacks Vincent, Rosalie, Simone (Vincent's mother) and the film to life, and this contrast is a strength. We get more than one perspective on quite a proportion of the film, and while this ultimately worked, initially it seemed repetitive before I'd worked out what was going on. While the set up seems a bit slow, it provides good solid background for many of the characters and the overall situation.

The French village scenes and occasional long view are lovely, particularly with the cool colours of winter and long low twilight ambiance.

The story comes from Camille Jourdy's graphic novels 'Rosalie Blum' and it could be this is the source of the film's greatest strengths but also weaknesses. If you're making a film based on a book, current expectation is to stick to the book. Omit, as necessary maybe, but don't add. I've not read (viewed?) these graphic novels, but somehow I found the story line just a wee bit too circumstantial or inadequately portrayed to be really riveting.