Rose

Revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki adheres to the concept of ‘Ma’, or intentional emptiness. Likewise, Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer’s equal-parts effervescent and unsettling third feature, Rose, sings with thoughtful silence and enriching stillness.

The mighty Sandra Hüller of The Zone of Interest, Toni Erdmann and Anatomy of a Fall fame plays the intriguing title character, a performance that has rightly earned her a Berlinale Silver Bear.

An independent woman refusing to be hemmed in by the limiting realities of gender in 17th-century Mitteleuropa, Rose has assumed the identity, and privileges, of at least two men. First, she fought as a soldier of fortune in the devastating Thirty Years’ War, gaining ample coin and a facial scar, the latter thanks to the bullet she wears on a chain, occasionally sucking it absentmindedly in the film’s quieter beats.

Rose then adopts the (unheard) name of a fallen comrade, returning to his village to claim his family’s long-abandoned stretch of fallow land. Intending on living alone, she employs well-treated farmhands. But her unexpected presence and strange appearance raises the grumbling suspicions of envious villagers.

When Rose slays a marauding beast – an early iteration of ‘Would you rather meet a man or bear in the woods?’ – she gains their grudging respect. So much so, one neighbour insists on marrying ‘him’ to his daughter, an also-brilliant Caro Braun’s curious Suzanna. A further queering of the situation that sets up a surprisingly tender union while also planting the seeds of their undoing.

Schleinzer’s wisest decision is what not to show

Schrödinger’s Rose is both real and not, an amalgam of many historical cases in which women attempted, via savvy subterfuge, to right patriarchal wrongs. The tragedy that befell so many of these brave souls hangs heavy over Schleinzer’s film, co-written with Alexander Brom. But there’s also good humour, notably in the deployment of a strap-on wooden instrument, and in Marisa Growaldt’s curt narration.

Stunningly shot in crystalline black-and-white by Gerald Kerkletz (Michael) and set to a breathily vocal score by composer Tara Nome Doyle, Rose’s many grace notes thrum with Ma, including a liminal scene of gently drifting snow stirring the trees.

That softest mark belies the deep wound of Schleinzer’s lilting masterpiece. His wisest decision is what not to show, as cruel history makes its unforgiving move. Rose may play in the past, but clearly rebukes our rancid culture wars that seek to police the genitals of strangers who just want to live in peace. In that, there’s hope.

Rose screened at the Sydney Film Festival.