The director Aurélie Saada, a singer making her feature filmmaking debut, has said that “Rose” was inspired by a dinner gathering at which her grandmother, recently widowed, became entranced with the joie de vivre of another guest, the filmmaker, writer and Holocaust survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens.
Something like that scene takes place half an hour into the fictional “Rose.” The grief-stricken title character (Françoise Fabian), whose husband, with whom her entire life was entwined, has just died, attends a lively dinner party with her adult daughter, Sarah (Aure Atika). Before the evening is over, Rose is passing around a joint with her tablemates and standing up to sing a Yiddish tune.
Saada allows this set piece to play out at gratifying length. That sort of attention to detail helps “Rose” hedge against the more obvious aspects of its story (the script is by Saada and Yaël Langmann). On paper, the premise — a sheltered woman learns late in life to embrace a more adventurous, extroverted version of herself — sounds too cute by half. Onscreen, it only sometimes crosses that line. (Yes, “Rose” includes a sequence in which Rose tries driving for the first time in 40 years; she eventually figures out the stick shift and rocks out to a 1980s cover of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”)
The dynamics with Sarah and with Rose’s other grown children, Pierre (Grégory Montel) and Léon (Damien Chapelle), raise the dramatic stakes. And in the closing scene, Saada, relying on a fierce bit of acting by Fabian, finds a way to pose the question directly to the audience of what Rose’s life should look like. The answer is clear.
Rose
Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
