A woman plagued by mental health issues accompanies her sister on a trip
to Paris, the city where her troubles originated.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Sofie Gråbøl, Lene Maria Christensen, Anders W. Berthelsen, Søren Malling
Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev broke onto the
international scene with 2009's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but in succumbing to the lure of Hollywood he quickly disappeared into
journeyman obscurity in the following years. Returning to his homeland
with a film inspired by the experiences of his schizophrenic sister, Oplev
has delivered his finest work with the tender and touching drama Rose.
Depictions of disabilities have become somewhat taboo recently. There's a
clamouring to have disabled roles played by actors who share those
disabilities, which in many cases isn't practically aligned with the
gruelling demands of a film shoot. This has resulted in the baby being
thrown out with the bathwater as filmmakers avoid tackling such
topics. Rose is clearly a deeply personal project for Oplev however, so he's
willing to risk any scorn by casting Sofie Gråbøl in the role of his film's schizophrenic
protagonist, Inger. Whether Gråbøl does justice to the illness isn't really for someone like me to
evaluate, but from my admittedly limited perspective she carries it off
with profound sensitivity in a movie that broaches this issue with a
moving humanity.
We're told that Inger's mental troubles began when she was living in
Paris as a younger woman and embarked on an affair with a married French
man. When he inevitably called an end to the affair, Inger returned to
Denmark and has spent much of the last three decades living in an
institution. Deciding sometimes it's best to confront your trauma,
Inger's sister Ellen (Lene Maria Christensen) and her husband Vagn (Anders W Berthelsen) take Inger along with them on a bus trip to
Paris for a bank holiday weekend. The film is set a few weeks after the
death of Princess Diana, and Vagn has a morbid compulsion to see the
spot where she perished.
Once on the bus, we get an immediate sense of how much patience will be
required for Ellen and Vagn to get through this trip. Inger makes an
instant enemy of a stuffy school vice principal, Andreas (Søren Malling), when her lack of a filter sees her
recount inappropriately sexual recollections of her previous time in
Paris within earshot of his 12-year-old son Christian (Luca Reichardt Ben Coker). When Inger holds up the bus trip by
insisting on burying a hedgehog she finds at the side of a
motorway, it further riles up Andreas, but it endears her to Christian,
who forms a bond with Inger over the course of the trip. Believing he's
doing his new friend a favour, Christian looks up the whereabouts of
Jacques (Jean-Pierre Lorit), Inger's former lover and the cause
of all her troubles. Will this innocent act on Christian's part prove
cathartic to Inger or only serve to destabilise her further?
This question sparks a tension that lingers throughout the film as the
long weekend days pass and Inger clings to a letter of some ambiguous
significance. There are ups and downs for Inger, who at some points
embraces her return to the city of lights while in other moments demands
to be taken home. As Ellen, Christensen gives a tangible depiction of a
sibling whose saintly motivations are sometimes tempered by human
frailty. There are a couple of moments where things get so real and raw
that Ellen has to excuse herself to sit alone at the back of the bus, or
step outside for a breath of air. We get the sense that she badly needs
to break down in tears but is compelled to maintain a brave face for her
sister's sake. Benefitting from more distance, Vagn has a more easygoing
attitude to the situation that sees him deploy humour in his dealings
with Inger. There's a brutal honesty in how Oplev depicts Vagn's ease
with Inger as a source of unspoken resentment for Ellen, as though she
feels cheated by her sister's willingness to cooperate with Vagn while
making things so difficult for Ellen.
It's this sort of nuance that makes Rose stand out from more conventional depictions of mental illness.
Even Andreas, who is initially set up as a stock villain, gives us
subtle clues to suggest he may have his own mental issues. But what
makes Rose so compelling is its ability to mine humour from the most fraught
situations. Inger is very funny, but the movie is always laughing with
her rather than at her. The only member of the Danish party who can
speak French, Inger steps up in certain situations, to the bemusement of
those accompanying her. Inger's fluency in a language her fellow
travellers can't understand allows her a certain freedom, an escape from
the constant reminders of her mental status. The French locals she
communicates with don't have the baggage of a familiarity with her
condition and thus treat her as they would anyone else. Isn't this so
often the purpose of a trip abroad, an escape not from yourself but from
the person those around you believe you to be? In her return to Paris,
Inger tears off three decades' worth of labels that have been applied to
her, and remembers who she really is for a few days.
Rose is in UK cinemas and on
VOD from June 28th.
