Drawing on the true story of a woman condemned to death for cross-dressing in an Europe crushed by the Bible, Markus Schleinzer explores the question: what makes a man? An existential question imposed on men by the freedom of his Rose, superbly embodied by the Oscar-winning actress Sandra Hüller.
“The trousers grant more freedom, and it’s just a piece of cloth, so I wore it.” In Rose, the Austrian director Markus Schleinzer presents the life of a woman who returns from the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), where she fought under a masculine identity that she keeps. To embody the heroine of the film with the eponymous name, no less than the German actress Sandra Hüller, who won the César in 2024 for Anatomy of a Fall, by the Frenchwoman Justine Triet.
Scarred by war, our veteran settles down to work the land in a small German Protestant community, where he eventually marries Suzanna. With his life in order, he becomes a respected farmer until his identity is questioned… More than the tale of a gender imposture, Rose observes what it reveals: if masculinity can be so perfectly reproduced, what is it really based on and what is its guarantor? Schleinzer frames this reflection in an open-air claustrophobic setting, sublimated by black-and-white cinematography. Nothing seems to exist beyond these farms, no horizon other than the fields of this village revealed through the character’s perspective.
What makes a man a man?
In the society depicted, giving a wife to a man is a mark of social distinction. A pact among men that elevates Rose to the head of the family, his wife moving from transactional object to the husband’s right-hand woman. There is no story of a forbidden lesbian romance; their relationship is purely contractual. Rose ticks all the boxes of masculinity, and Markus Schleinzer never argues about the freedom conferred by the status of man. All he needs is to place Rose opposite a woman who does not benefit from it: Suzanna, who knows the rules governing gender relations. The wife cushions her words so as not to strike at her husband’s ego, deliberately belittling herself so that he does not feel diminished, weighing her words and skirting the edges to avoid his fury. But once the deception is discovered, the system jams: why must Rose be judged?
À quoi mesure-t-on en effet l’honnêteté d’un homme : à ce qu’il est biologiquement, à la manière essentialiste, ou de façon existentielle à ce qu’il fait ? Mais nous ne sommes qu’au XVIIIe siècle, dans une société régie par la doxa religieuse, où l’ordre social se confond avec l’ordre naturel. Le procès qui s’ouvre est bien celui d’une transgression taboue : l’inversion des rôles de genre. C’est en affirmant, droite comme la justice, qu’elle s’est octroyée seule l’autorisation de porter un pantalon, que Rose se condamne. Cet impensable libre-arbitre lui fait risquer la peine de mort. Le réalisateur n’exagère rien, puisqu’il s’est inspiré du destin, transposé un siècle plus tard, de Catharina Margaretha Linck. Engagée comme soldat dans la guerre de Succession d’Espagne, celle-ci est la dernière exécution recensée en Europe d’une femme pour homosexualité.
