Julien (Pierre Cosso) and Rosa (Marianne Basler) in Paul Vecchiali’s Rosa la rose, fille publique (all photos courtesy of Radiance Films, and American Genre Film Archive)
Does anyone love their job quite as much as Rosa, the bright-eyed and bushy-haired sex worker and l’amour de tout le monde à Paris in Paul Vecchiali’s 1986 doomed and demented romance flick, Rosa la rose, fille publique? It’s hard to imagine. She’s even working on her twentieth birthday!
Currently screening at Metrograph on the occasion of its new restoration by Radiance Films and American Genre Film Archive, the little-seen (at least in the U.S.) film depicts a working girl with a perky erotic enthusiasm only matched by Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter in Poor Things. There’s no drudgery here, no going through the mundane thrusty motions with yet another john (jean?) or walking the Les Halles stroll while bored to tears in her appropriately français blue and red dress with a hint of nip peeking from its strung-up top. Played with infectiously plucky aplomb by Marianne Basler, we first see Rosa as she barters with and then, mischievously ropes two battling johns into a threesome. Her parade of paying suitors doesn’t end there as the film follows Rosa through one fateful day as she skips off with numerous other men. The most notable might be her role play as a stern, faithful housewife, wearing a frilly white apron over a lacy red bra and panty combo, as her cheating pseudo-hubby tears into a duck à l’orange, confesses his crimes, and withstands her chosen punishment—an aggressive wash, rub, and tug. Between clapping her hands with excitement before this deranged role play and scampering off into a basement in her strange flop hotel-event center-tabac (?) for yet another quickie (though she draws the line at doing it in the kitchen), it’s not hard to see why Rosa is the favored girl on the block—even by adorable, saucer-eyed underaged youth Laurent (Laurent Lévy), who drifts around her like an eager, horny puppy dog.
Rosa (Marianne Basler) and her threesome partners in Paul Vecchiali’s Rosa la rose, fille publique
What is difficult to suss out is whether Rosa is in it for the love of the game, the growing stack of cash piled on her The Earrings of Madame de…circular-mirrored dressing table (which, yes, is the source of a few dramatic reflected shots—it’s no mistake that Vecchiali name-checks Max Ophüls and Danielle Darrieux in the opening credits), or the fur coat goodies she receives from her kindly, hunky pimp Gilbert, played by square-jawed Belle Du Jour heartthrob Jean Sorel. Or maybe she’s just into roses, the precariously precious and almost dangerously sentimental conceit of Rosa la rose, fille publique. Like a proto-The Bachelor(ette), these swooning jeans and jeanettes, in the case of one hopeful butch who is quickly abandoned, pick up Rosa by handing her a long-stemmed rose. Or, well, sometimes an enormous bouquet—more roses for the hooker au coeur d’or. Though Rosa is the most adored, she’s not the only girl who gets the rose. She works her block with a chattering twosome of aging sex workers, only listed by their underestimated ages, Quarante (Catherine Lachens) and Trente-cinq (Evelyne Buyle). Their goofy, often drunken, bantering threatens to steal the show as they titter and argue over what kind of fish gobbles up sharks’ cast-offs (just like they do with Rosa’s), a pilot fish or a remora. Let’s be honest, as lovely as Rosa is, they’re probably much more fun. They get my rose!
Sure, this rose conceit is ridiculous and almost gratingly French, and yet, it’s also an opportunity for Vecchiali to flex his highly stylized muscles, previously seen in his pent-up giallo The Strangler, which was given a breath of fresh air by its rerelease in 2023. Rather than flowy white scarves wrapped tightly around lonely-hearted women’s necks, then yanked, Vecchiali switches out erotic asphyxiation for plain eroticism, like the memorable shot of a rose tossed across Rosa’s fuzzy bare bush. The filmmaker also maintains his talent for pregnant leering gazes; his camera moves consistently around the wet cobblestoned Les Halles streets as if we, the viewers, are ourselves potential desperate clients clutching our roses. At times, this aesthetic fixation risks overpowering the action. Take the Rosa’s decadent birthday lunch, presented in a dizzying overhead view of unrecognizable dishes (Just try to identify them—a ham? What is that pile of stuff? Veggies?) as the camera soars over the diners’ heads, sitting only on one side of the table as if they’re in a wedding party with no marriage. Coupled with Trente-Cinq’s sudden costume change into a Marlene Dietrich tux, this scene is so uber-posed that I initially mistook it for a dream sequence.
Trente-cinq (Evelyne Buyle) wanders down a wet Parisian block in Paul Vecchiali’s Rosa la rose, fille publique
Still, Vecchiali’s aesthetic stranglehold succeeds in constructing a hermetically sealed world where this criminal underground is quaintly romantic rather than sleazy and sordid. The population of Rosa la rose, fille publique’s Paris is almost entirely sex workers, johns, and the other men who work for Gilbert in some unclear capacity, mostly to go on vague missions and snark at each other while wearing Jean Cocteau-esque Breton striped tank tops. Speaking of Cocteau, though the film is presumably set in the 1980s, nothing really secures it within that time frame. This could be the 1950s…or the 1930s (another opening credit tribute is bestowed upon Jean Renoir). Even when this tightly controlled, nostalgic milieu is punctured, it barely makes a dent. A bustling crowd of revelers fades into background noise; a crazy that harasses people at a bar seems straight out of central casting.
One gets the sense that Rosa could have happily kept existing in this world forever if not for a Francophone trash (is French trash white trash?) meet-cute that blows up her entire existence. The man responsible is Julien (Pierre Cosso), a smoldering blue-collar hottie who resembles a cross between a Gallic James Dean and Chris Helmsworth, though Vecchiali was clearly also thinking of other working-class studs like Marlon Brando, whose photo hovers above Rosa’s dressing table. Subtle! With his beautiful face streaked with white paint, Julien first lays eyes on Rosa after wandering into her birthday lunch. Vecchiali treats their love at first sight in a characteristically overblown manner. Rosa sits at the center of the table, staring into space before catching Julien’s glance. The conversation around her stops, with others talking to each other in groups, posed like The Last Supper. A mural even hovers above Rosa’s head as if it’s projecting heavenly rays. Even Da Vinci didn’t think to spruce up Jesus’s final dinner party with dancing. As Trente-Cinq struts across the front of the wedding table, it’s a gorgeous and surreal representation of time stopping for the star-crossed lovers.
Rosa (Marianne Basler) and Laurent (Laurent Lévy) in Paul Vecchiali’s Rosa la rose, fille publique
Clearly, Rosa didn’t expect love to come (party-)crashing into her life! Nor does she completely want it. What, then, is she supposed to do?! Does she fall into his arms? Give up her working girl life and run away with him? He wouldn’t have the cash for that! This isn’t Pretty Woman. Rosa la rose, fille publique is Pretty Woman for the ill-bred! Instead, Rosa vamps with a song and dance number, then proceeds to go completely batshit crazy. Fellow cinephile and friend of Filthy Dreams Graham Russell pointed out to me that Rosa la rose, fille publique was released the same year as another working-class nutto romance, Betty Blue. The only hitch is that Béatrice Dalle’s Betty was almost instantly volatile. Rosa’s unhinged behavior starts out slow, though she isn’t entirely stable from the beginning, shouting after her threesome partners, “Watch out for AIDS!” Hoo-ook, Rosa!
Even so, it’s hard to anticipate the berserk depths of Rosa’s feverish love-sick meltdown. She cries! She lies in bed with Julien like a corpse (what happened to that sex worker spirit?)! She bugs out her eyes with haunted, lovelorn psychosis! She throws up! She cries again! She runs around! She cries some more! She tries to devour Julien’s face! And while Rosa’s final unraveling should remain mercifully unspoiled, how else is unexpected love supposed to end than a deeply discomforting sex scene and bloodshed?