Rosalie, by Stéphanie Di Giusto | The girl with the beard

In Rosalieher second feature film, director Stéphanie Di Giusto reunites with Nadia Tereszkiewicz, whom she directed in The dancer. Winner of the César for Most Promising Actress last year, the actress plays a woman with hirsutism.. The Press met them in Paris.

Nadia Tereszkiewicz dreamed of teaching literature. While she was preparing for her letter aggregation, she had to ask permission to take time off in order to film in The dancer (2016), biographical drama about Loïe Fuller by Stéphanie Di Giusto. Although she played a silent role, the one who would play the nanny in Baby sitter (2022), by Monia Chokri based on the play by Catherine Léger, fell in love with cinema at first sight. Six years later, through a chance meeting, the director offered her “the role of a lifetime”.

“The script was very detailed, I had the impression of reading a literary text. There was this impression of romance, of a great film, remembers the French actress born to a Finnish mother and a Polish father. I was touched by the character. I saw someone there who fights to be who she wants to be, who must overcome the judgment of others. She has an extraordinary difference, but at the same time, I identify with her. We all have a difference. When I read the script, I completely saw myself in this character. I loved his courage, his rage for life, his joy, his faith. »

Secret

This character is Rosalie, whose story imagined by Stéphanie Di Giusto is freely inspired by the fate of Clémentine Delait (1865-1939), bar owner, bearded woman and mascot of the Poilus during the First World War. A young woman living in France in 1875, Rosalie is given in marriage by her father (Gustave Kervern) to an indebted café owner, Abel (Benoît Magimel). Having married her for her dowry, the man is horrified to discover that his new wife has been hiding a secret from him.

“It’s funny because in her autobiography, she never spoke about her husband,” adds Stéphanie Di Giusto. She had adopted a little girl and that touched me a lot. I wondered what it was like to love this woman, who embraced her hair. As I didn’t want to make a biopic afterwards The dancer, I was also inspired by several women who had this genetic disorder, hirsutism. »

Finding our times very violent, Stéphanie Di Giusto says she needed to write a love story. However, she did not want a banal romance, rather a story of unconditional and extraordinary love. Having lost her father, she reveals that unconsciously, she also wanted to deal with the protection of man. More than anything, she wanted to immerse this character courageously assuming his difference in a period of standardization in order to draw a parallel with the present time.

“Setting my film in 1875 is not a coincidence,” says the filmmaker. Five years after the Franco-Prussian War, people are very humiliated, there is a climate of suspicion, we look at the other, who is necessarily an enemy. It is also the beginning of capitalism, of social paternalism, embodied by Barcelin, Benjamin Biolay’s character, whose idea was to control everyone in their way of being, in their lives. Everyone got up and went to bed at the same time, women worked as much as men, there wasn’t much to do outside of work. »

Ode to difference

In order to play Rosalie, Nadia Tereszkiewicz had to undergo four-hour makeup sessions during which a specialist created the beard one hair at a time. The actress reveals that it took months of trying to find a beard that was soft and pretty. If she remains ravishing behind her beard, she does not hide the aesthetic shock experienced during the first days of filming Rosalie. She was ashamed of her appearance, but thanks to the kindness of Stéphanie Di Giusto and the film crew, she enjoyed wearing a beard, like her character.

“In fact, I was very fragile,” admits the actress. I needed encouragement and I felt that they were all with me, that they were all there for Rosalie. I love the idea of ​​transforming myself for roles. If it hadn’t been Stéphanie, I think I would have hesitated, but I knew she was definitely going to do something beautiful because that’s what she’s looking for. I didn’t question the ridiculousness at all. »

Having been inspired by Renoir’s films for “their human simplicity”, Stéphanie Di Giusto found the courage to shoot Rosalie thanks to the beauty of Annie Girardot in The Bearded Lady’s Husband (1964), by Marco Ferreri. Nadia Tereszkiewicz refusing to see him, just like Elephant Man (1980), by David Lynch, or Freaks (1932), by Todd Browning, because, according to her, it was necessary to “find something profoundly human”, the director suggested that she draw her character’s rage for life from the one played by Émilie Dequenne, who fights for a normal life, in Rosette (1999), by the Dardenne brothers.

“Rosalie accepts what she is. She’s a freedwoman. She faces the gaze of others. She asserts her singular femininity in the face of the diktats of the time, but, above all, she never positions herself as a victim. Despite her beard, she asserts her need for love while others want to reduce her to a monster. Strangely, the more she wears her beard, the more she will blossom as a woman. The more the film progresses, the more beautiful she is. Besides, when she no longer has this beard, all of a sudden, it seems like there is something missing,” says Stéphanie Di Giusto.

In theaters April 26

Travel expenses were paid by Unifrance.