{"id":482510,"date":"2026-02-15T23:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T23:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482510\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T23:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T23:19:08","slug":"sandra-huller-amazes-in-immaculately-controlled-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482510\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandra H\u00fcller Amazes in Immaculately Controlled Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhile jumping through the hoops of her first U.S. awards season two years ago for \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d and \u201cThe Zone of Interest,\u201d it must have amused Sandra H\u00fcller<\/a> to be labeled a \u201cbreakthrough performer\u201d \u2014 as if the \u201cToni Erdmann\u201d star hadn\u2019t repeatedly proven herself one of the world\u2019s great working actors since her startling feature film debut in 2006\u2019s \u201cRequiem.\u201d No one should be surprised that she\u2019s again extraordinary in \u201cRose<\/a>,\u201d as a 17th-century war veteran concealing a host of secrets (not least among them her gender) beneath a man\u2019s rugged work clothes. Yet the performance itself is consistently and subtly surprising: still and observant when you might expect mannered fuss, raging when you expect retreat, never transparent or complacent regarding the character\u2019s motives or sense of self.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet for all the Olympian acting craft it showcases, \u201cRose\u201d is no mere performance vehicle. The latest from radical Austrian formalist Markus Schleinzer<\/a>, it\u2019s a work so tightly disciplined in every aspect \u2014 from its haunted monochrome lensing to its razor-shaved final edit to the sea of tacit political commentary underpinning its no-word-wasted script \u2014 that any bum thespian note would shatter the whole immaculate construction. A casting director for the likes of Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner before he turned to filmmaking, Schleinzer needed and found a virtuoso who could also submit herself entirely to the film\u2019s quietly complex thesis on gender performativity and privilege, past and present.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exactitude of Schleinzer\u2019s filmmaking doesn\u2019t come quickly, it would appear. \u201cRose\u201d is just his third feature in 16 years, and arrives eight years after his astonishing sophomore effort \u201cAngelo,\u201d a rigorously revisionist biopic of African-born slave turned Viennese courtier Angelo Soliman that was too austerely confrontational to secure the distribution it merited in many territories. (His assured debut, the 2011 paedophile portrait \u201cMichael,\u201d was no picnic for potential audiences either.) While no more compromising in its telling of a supremely sad and socially unforgiving story, \u201cRose\u2019s\u201d linear elegance and delicate craft collaborate with H\u00fcller\u2019s riveting work to make it the director\u2019s most accessible film, sure to interest discerning arthouse buyers following its Berlinale competition premiere.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough she doesn\u2019t give it up readily, Rose (H\u00fcller) has a simple explanation for why she\u2019s chosen to live as a man for much of her adult life. \u201cThere is more freedom in trousers,\u201d she says, \u201cand they\u2019re just a piece of cloth, so I put them on.\u201d That is no casual act, however, in 17th-century Germany, least of all in the ascetic Protestant village she chooses to settle in, following a long, brutal stint as a soldier in the Thirty Years\u2019 War. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe villagers are initially wary of this scarred, soft-spoken, diminutive figure, who turns up claiming to be the long-absent heir to a crumbling local farmstead. But Rose \u2014 we never learn the male name she gives people, just as they never learn her female one, a typically geometric detail in Schleinzer and Alexander Brom\u2019s screenplay \u2014 gradually wins their approval with her work ethic and church attendance, to the point that a neighboring farmer offers her the hand of his eldest daughter Suzanna (Caro Braun). As part of a land exchange deal, of course: That a woman is shown to be such literal currency in this world is a sharp reminder of why Rose has opted out of that identity.<\/p>\n

\n\tSuzanna is a stolid and servile wife, less complaining than her father about her husband\u2019s reluctance to consummate the marriage, and a doting mother when baby eventually \u2014 and most unexpectedly, to Rose at least \u2014 makes three. There\u2019s a slender streak of humor, dry and combustible as kindling, in the film\u2019s exploration of this absurd domestic setup, which lays out the rigid expectations of women and men alike in a punishingly conservative society. Though predominantly a fictional narrative, \u201cRose\u201d has been built from Schleinzer\u2019s extensive research into various stories of male-presenting women through the centuries; even as it tilts into melodrama, it has the ring of historical truth. (So do the film\u2019s remarkably weathered production and costume design, in which every last patinated timber beam or scuffed boot heel appears excavated from the ground itself.) <\/p>\n

\n\tRunning narration, delivered with a kind of academic remove by actor Marisa Growaldt, provides some access to the inner life of our strategically taciturn, withdrawn protagonist, though it isn\u2019t quite omniscient either. Schleinzer is content to let some ambiguities linger as the situation tautens and worsens, including the question of Rose\u2019s own sexuality, or asexuality, as the case may be. She doesn\u2019t identify as transgender or dysphoric, and describes her male presentation simply as a practical means of moving unimpeded through the world. Or mostly unimpeded: Marriage is another purely pragmatic move, though as Rose and Suzanna get to know each other better, a cautious tenderness builds between them \u2014 a flicker of warmth at the heart of this brisk exercise. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt once armored, guarded and intensely vulnerable, H\u00fcller\u2019s performance is the human factor here \u2014 a volatile, unpredictable element, but one nonetheless attuned to the film\u2019s meticulous shaping and mise-en-sc\u00e8ne. While editor Hansj\u00f6rg Wei\u00dfbrich (\u201cSeptember 5\u201d) crops this spiraling folk saga to just 93 essential minutes, the stark, poolingly dark black-and-white lensing by Schleinzer\u2019s regular DP Gerald Kerkletz is concentrated and patient, often searching H\u00fcller\u2019s face in compassionate close-up for just the right twitch or tell. Most sparely effective of all is an a capella vocal score by singer-songwriter Tara Nome Doyle, whose high, moaning strains contain all the anguish that Rose, in all her stoic, assumed masculinity, keeps inside. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While jumping through the hoops of her first U.S. awards season two years ago for \u201cAnatomy of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,106561,134,244561,344,12431,243985],"class_list":{"0":"post-482510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-berlin-film-festival","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-markus-schleinzer","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-rose","15":"tag-sandra-hu00fcller"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}