François Ozon | Une rose entre nous (A Rose Between Us) / 1994

prick of the thorn

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nicolas Mercier and François Ozon (screenplay), François Ozon (director) Une rose entre nous (A Rose Between Us) / 1994 [27 minutes]

 

In Ozon’s early study of sexual experimentation and confusion, a young British woman, Rose (Sasha Hails) enters a hair salon to have her hair colored from its raven tones to ginger or “squirrel-red,” which the young apprentice stylist Paul (Rodolphe Lesage) readily accomplishes. But the moment he’s “finished, she, now speaking only in English, pretends outrage for what he’s done to her, and rushes from the shop in anger without paying, Paul fast on her heels in order to be properly recompensed for his efforts.

     After a street incident, witnessed by his fellow hairdresser Rémy (Christophe Hémon), wherein she finally offers to pay after describing him basically as a fag to his boss, he rejects her money and, winning back her power over him, she invites him to a late night club, The Palace.

     So begins what is basically an evening and morning of sexual-shifting and role-playing, as Rose gradually lures the young Paul into an agreement to prostitute themselves to two older men, she to Robert (Jacques Disse), evidently one of her regulars, while the cute hairdresser will have sex with Yves (Francis Arnaud), promising that they will earn a great deal of money, over a thousand francs for a not so difficult evening.

    

     At the same time, it’s apparent that Paul is attracted to his hairdresser friend Rémy, who also shows up at the club, eyeing Paul as someone to whom he is deeply attracted but also with a sense of judging his peer’s ridiculous infatuation with Rose.

      Rémy, who evidently sells drugs at the club, faces off with her alone, describing her as a little “con-girl,” while still attempting to sell her drugs which she promises to purchase the next evening when she will have enough money (although we have already seen her be paid for arranging to Paul to have sex with Yves).

     But for these young kids, it doesn’t seem to matter much. The men finally take both Rose and Paul to an apartment, where Rose sings a cabaret-like song as together they all dance, putting Paul in the center of a ring they form before he finally passes out from dizziness from the champagne he’s been drinking.

     Rejuvenating the boy, Rose finally convinces him to go with Yves. We watch Yves go down on Paul, while in the next room, the far more seasoned Rose refuses to have sex with Robert.

     As we see Yves toss a filled condom to the floor, it’s clear that he has fucked Paul, despite the boy’s earlier insistence that he didn’t want to be sodomized. What Paul also discovers is that Yves has paid 3,000 francs for him, while Rose has given Paul only a single note. Furious with her, he tosses even that amount back at her before attempting to rape her. But when Robert intervenes by appearing at the doorway, Paul runs off, Rose following after, apologizing for the lie and convincing him to come back home with her, where the two do indeed have sex—but a tender sex of the kind of which Rose is clearly not used to. We might even suspect that Rose is Paul’s first woman.

    Finally, he suggests that he is going out for some croissants and will be back soon, she offering him all the money which is still in her purse. He quietly rejects her offer, saying he has enough, as she watches him through window, stroking her cat, realizing that he won’t be coming back.

    The camera shows him having returned to the hairdressers, working now more comfortably with  Rémy, offering him one of the croissants he has purchased, as the two laugh together now in friendship.

     What we realize in Ozon’s work which some may read as representing child abuse, is truly a comedy, in that these three, Paul, Rémy, and Rose have used the adults, at different times, to explore their own sexual desires and orientations.

     The young unconfident 18-year-old Paul of the day before has returned to Rémy with a far deeper knowledge of himself. Like the Balthus poster that Rose has on the wall, these “children” have allowed themselves to be sexually objectified each for their own purposes of discovering how to negotiate the adult world and what sex is all about. Despite prostitution, robbery, drugs, intended rape, and sexual longing none of these youths has been truly traumatized, but are joyful in the discovery of their own desires and its expression through their bodies.

      In the 1990s French director Ozon was one of the few brave enough to explore this territory, as had filmmakers as diverse as Louis Malle, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Delannoy, Mauro Bolognini, Carlos Hugo Christensen, Lasse Nielsen, and a few others had in the more open-minded 1960s and 70s.

 

Los Angeles, June 11, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).