TIFF 2022 | Rosie (Gail Maurice, Canada) — Discovery

By Josh Lewis 

Montreal, 1984. A world of hounding landlords, drag-show auditions, and desperate children in search of family according to this debut comic-drama about living on the economic and cultural fringes from Métis filmmaker Gail Maurice. Due to a few bureaucratic child service technicalities, Rosie (Keris Hope Hill), a bright and precocious Indigenous orphan, ends up under the precarious care of her flustered French-Canadian Aunt Frederique (Mélanie Bray), an experience that Maurice renders with a decent feel for local detail (the rundown sexshops, junkyard camping sessions, etc) and the palpable yearnings of heartbroken outsiders. There’s an admirable attention paid to trying to see the types of people who are easily forgotten, including loving depictions of Cree culture and the all-too-real and disturbing particulars of things like pauper’s graves. However, in an effort to rework these lives into a feel-good chosen family indie drama with the pastel-colored optimism of a child, Maurice sands off some of its realities. At one point, Fred’s genderfluid friend Flo (Constant Bernard) flirts with the idea of caving to their father’s demand and dressing “like a man” to attend a funeral, and since we’ve come to know Flo for who they are or how they express themselves it’s a moment of clear, effective, wordless discomfort…which is then almost immediately diluted by Flo reading a letter out loud explaining their family history, and taking a literal, mawkish victory lap of rebellious triumph. And if the film isn’t wielding its big dramatic hammers in a similar way (i.e., how suddenly Fred turns around her impoverished circumstances in order to get Rosie back), it’s frequently leaning on twee episodic encounters like a recurring tap dancing Cree homeless man or a series of ’80s singalong anthem montages that feel a bit too easy for the evidently real texture and life trying to be explored.