‘The Rose Maker’ is a crowd-pleasing bagatelle. And so what? Borneo Bulletin Online – Borneo Bulletin

Ann Hornaday

THE WASHINGTON POST The Rose Maker, a winsome, undemanding dramedy by Pierre Pinaud, opens with an extravagantly staged sequence in the rose garden of Pariss Parc de Bagatelle, a pilgrimage destination for worldwide rosarians and the people who love them.

That setting turns out to be an apt one for a film thats something of a cinematic bagatelle viewers looking for novelty, thematic heft and edgy plot twists are advised to skip this wispy audience-pleaser, which strains for credulity as it goes for the sentimental jugular.

But you know what? Its spring, were exhausted, and the gentle humanism at the heart of The Rose Makers most shameless manipulations might be just what more than a few cynicism-drenched audiences need.

The Bagatelle scene features Eve Vernet (Catherine Frot), who with her faithful assistant Vra (Olivia Cte) is bringing her latest hybrid to the Parcs annual rose contest.

Eve inherited her vast rose farm from her father and continues to follow his punctilious artisanal breeding procedures, delicately cross-pollinating her plants, saving the seeds and babying along the new flowers in the hopes that theyll become bestsellers.

Eve is being aggressively courted by a brash young businessman (Vincent Dedienne) who wants to absorb her operation into his own global conglomerate, but shes determined to stay independent, while the bills pile up and her beloved creations fail to ignite the market.

Recognising Eves need for cheap labour, Vra enlists the services of three ex-convicts mild-mannered Samir (Fatsah Bouyahmed), shy Nadge (Marie Petiot) and surly Fred (rapper Melan Omerta). Once these three erstwhile miscreants are on the scene, the plot points unfold with metronomic predictability, from the inevitable personality conflicts, life lessons, revelations and seemingly catastrophic setbacks to the zany scheme Eve comes up with to save her lifes work.

Although The Rose Maker is ostensibly about how Eve and her ragtag group of misfits pull together, Pinaud focusses on her relationship with Fred, at the expense of Samir and Nadge, who recede into the background, popping out for comic relief from time to time.

Narrative tension is virtually nonexistent in a story animated by stakes that couldnt be lower, or more formulaic; the plot hums along smoothly, much like Vra s battered VW that runs right on cue, no matter what misadventures befall it.

The Rose Maker, which was filmed in Frances picturesque Roanne hills, is undeniably pretty to look at production designer Philippe Chiffre appoints Eves isolated farm house in romantic swaths of rich-looking fabrics and floral-themed objets, and the flowers themselves are given pride of place in adoring close-ups.

From a distance, the rows and rows of abundant blooms are so vividly hued that they look colour-corrected to within an inch of their lives; squint and The Rose Maker becomes a poppy field worth of Monet in Argenteuil.

The Rose Maker is so frictionless and adamantly easygoing that its most genuine moments arrive as a shock Frot and Omerta have managed to develop real chemistry amid the cliches, and the films climactic scenes are tear-jerkers that actually feel earned.

Top it off with Pinauds final dedication, and The Rose Maker turns into a film that wears its emotions lightly but generously, like dew on a blush-coloured petal.