The Universe Corrects My Error

Yesterday I wrote an entry with the five best performances by an actress.  Immediately after I posted it I came across the story referenced in the picture above.  It was as if the universe were trying to correct an error.

The 1999 film Rosetta is a grim, depressing indictment of Western capitalism, a neo-realist picture of the economic vice the poor can never escape, choking their soul, crushing their dignity, leaving them even unable to afford enough gas to kill themselves.  17-year-old Émilie Dequenne plays Rosetta, a teenage girl living in a Belgian trailer park with her alcoholic tramp mother.  They fight, Rosetta tries to catch trout out of a nearby dirty river, believes a job is the key to life, betrays her only pseudo-friend to get a job, literally wallows in mud, and generally lives a completely soul-less existence chasing the work phantasm that Western capitalism has brainwashed the sheeple into thinking is the purpose of life.

Delivering a wonderfully naturalistic performance, Dequenne, with minimal dialogue, powerfully conveys the character's desperation and despair, she's a character both sympathetic and repulsive, a difficult balance to maintain while never seeming emotionally fake.  Crushed by poverty, her morality trampled by labor insecurity, Dequenne's Rosetta is the standard bearer for the Western underclass in its struggle to hold its last shred of dignity.  A performance not to be forgotten.