13 Oct 2021

Review: The Rose Maker

From At The Movies, 7:30 pm on 13 October 2021

The Rose Maker is one of those little French films that don’t show up at big international festivals – certainly not the one at Cannes.  

But they’re staples of more regional French festivals - ones that don’t so much reflect the whims of critics as the popular taste.

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Photo: Screenshot

The Rose Maker is most likely to be successful among keen gardeners, particularly, as it turns out, in New Zealand. 

The plot turns on a rare breed of rose that only exists in two locations – in a Paris suburb, and in Auckland New Zealand.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Rose-grower Eve’s family business is on the rocks - not enough cash, and only one loyal employee, Vera. Who’s had a bright idea.

Vera brings in three work-experience employees – free labour, in other words, whose only shortcoming is a total ignorance about any sort of gardening.

But the clock’s ticking. Eve has got just six months before the important rose competition - the event that will make or break her business. Can she get Fred, Samir and Nadege up to scratch in time?

It’s standard feelgood fare, or course, and before we can triumph and, er, feel good, we need a few disasters along the way.  

The Three Stooges blunder about, turning on the heater when they shouldn’t, digging up the wrong weeds, and not knowing their roses from their elbows.

I have to confess that these films are easier to grasp when they’re about something I know the remotest thing about. Baking cakes, ballroom dancing, even male stripping are subjects you don’t need much background expertise to follow.

But the intricacies of rose-developing - particularly in idiomatic French with rather technical subtitles - was a bit more of a challenge for me. 

But my neighbours seemed to make less heavy weather of it – I’m guessing they were all rose-fanciers themselves.

Fortunately, as Eve, Vera and their three assistants graft, weed and pollinate, there’s enough subplots to keep the rest of us interested.  Like a rival rose-maker threatening to buy out Eve’s business.

And while Samir and Nadege don’t warrant much in the way of back-story, young rocker Fred turns out to have hidden, rose-growing depths.

We also find out more about high-end rose breeding and scent differentiation, which is harder to pull off visually than you’d think.

But The Rose Maker succeeds well enough because it delivers on its modest promises.

It stars likeable French favourite Catherine Frot as Eve, the story is not only easy to empathise with, but it’s exactly what an audience of gardeners want on a wet Sunday afternoon. 

There are times when you want to be challenged and confronted, surprised and alarmed at the cinema.  This isn’t for those times. 

“What’s life without beauty?” asks Eve throughout the film, and by the end of The Rose Maker, you know the answer.

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