Final Rating: 2.5/5
ROSIE is a coming of age story, that while one of the main characters is a child, is more about adults coming to terms with their responsibilities and accepting themselves for who they are. The film is a familiar one where the ultimate message is that you are born to relatives, but family is who you choose to surround yourself with. Writer and director Gail Maurice is making her feature length directorial debut after making a short film with the same name back in 2018. I first became aware of Maurice when watching the multi-lingual satire Québexit (and supsequetley interviewed director Joshua Demers), where she she co-wrote and acted in a supporting role as a Cree woman caught in the middle of Québec trying to annex itself from the rest of Canada. I have since seen her pop up in several other projects along the way and when seeing that she had a film playing the festival circuit I wanted to check it out.
The film follows Frédérique, played by Melanie Bray, a woman who lives in Montréal in 1984 and while starting a new job at a sex shop is confronted with a children’s aid worker who is pawning off a young Indian girl named Rosie, an exuberant newcomer Keris Hope Hill, who is purportedly Frédérique’s niece. Fred and Rosie’s mom were not blood siblings, but rather it sounds like they lived in the same foster home and were adoptive siblings. They were close when they were young, but eventually due to Fred unable to be a parental figure to her younger sister, they parted ways. Fred barely has her life together. She is three months late on paying her rent, she often struggles keeping a job and her dream of being a Basquiat-esque artist isn’t going anywhere. Throwing in a child she’s never met and knowing full well that the foster system will likely not be kind to an indigenous child, Fred reluctantly decides to take her in temporarily while she hopes Social Services will eventually be able to find her real family.
Despite not having her life fully together, Fred does have two close friends she can rely on, the gender fluid Flo and Mo, played respectively by Constant Bernard and Alex Trahan. They refer to themselves as “women with really big… hands”. Mo wants nothing more than to be a drag queen, but who’s nerves refuse to allow her to even audition. Flo (Florian we later learn is her full name) on the other hand struggles more with her identity and processing the trauma of her family disowning her. The three adults wish to do the best they can for the child, even if they aren’t fully sure how to take care of one. An early obstacle is Rosie only speaks English, Fred struggles with the language while Mo and Flo don’t seem to speak it at all. A nice touch is as the movie goes on Rosie begins to throw in French words and phrases that she has picked up on.
Gail Maurice really excels as a first time director. She along with cinematographer Celiana Cárdenas show off some impressive camera work. Maurice knows when it is the right time to have a static shot from a distance and when the story needs close hand held work, spinning around the characters. She also plays with focus and lighting in creative and evocative ways. The script, while featuring naturalistic dialogue does at times feel like other films where the main character is a reluctant parent. One wish would be that the political themes were explored deeper, as that would have made the movie even richer. Both Fred and Rosie’s mom were living with a family that was not their own, in a period known as the Sixties Scoop, where over a period of thirty years over twenty thousand Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed in mostly non-Indigenous homes. If you’re aware of the horrific history of this period, the movie makes subtle nods towards it, but if you aren’t you could be left questioning what happened to Fred and her adoptive sister.
The heart of the movie goes to Constant Bernard and his portrayal of Flo. Flo’s storyline of her struggling to accept her gender fluid identity in the face of her family, specifically her father rejecting her, brings upon the most emotion. Early on Flo’s father finds and he barks that her mother has died and if Flo dares to show up at the funeral, it better be dressed like a man before hurling other slurs. Flo tearfully reads a letter from her mother, who despite not having the closest relationship still accepted her for who she was. On the day of the funeral Flo decides that paying her respects was more important than being herself, so we see her painfully get dressed in a men’s suit and tie, no makeup on and certainly no wig showing Florian in a masculine presenting fashion. This is the ultimate insult to injury. It takes a well timed “what the fuck” from Rosie to make everyone burst into laughter and for Flo to realize if she is going to attend her mothers funeral, it will be as herself, not as someone her father would be more comfortable around.
Maurice, who also appears in a cameo as a Cree teacher towards the end of the film has made an adorable film about the family that supports and accepts you as the best kind of family, regardless of blood relation, legal affiliation or otherwise. The film has a heart warming ending that will fill you up and leave feeling exuberant.
ROSIE was seen during the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival. Thank you to the Murray Patterson Marketing Group for the screener.
