Based loosely on a true story, this handsome, inoffensively bland, French-language period drama unfolds in rural Brittany in the 1870s, a grimly conservative place where difference of any kind is treated with suspicion and revulsion.
Rosalie (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) knows this only too well. She was born with a rare condition which means that her face and body are covered in hair. She has concealed it from the world, with a diligent shaving routine and high-necked blouses. But when she marries Abel (Benoît Magimel), a grumpy, debt-ridden bar owner who is more interested in the dowry than he is in his new wife, Rosalie somehow grows confident enough to reveal her true self. And for a while at least, she is embraced by the community. But the Edward Scissorhands plot trajectory is inevitable, and the fickle locals soon turn against her.
It’s watchable enough, but a cursory screenplay lets the film down, and Rosalie’s arc from shaven shame to hairy defiance never fully persuades.
• In UK and Irish cinemas now
