Rosalie (2023), BBCiPlayer, Directed by Stéphanie Di Giusto, Screenplay by Stéphanie Di Giusto and Sandrine Le Coustumer, based on real-life accounts of women who lived with hirsutism in the 19th century, for example, Clémentine Delait.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002kkn7/rosalie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_(2023_film)

I didn’t get it at first. France, 1870. Rosalie is a young woman (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) awaiting marriage. She’s beautiful and fresh faced as eighteen-year old Dana (Rosemary Scallon) who was Ireland’s first ever Eurovision winner in 1970. All Kinds of Everything…reminds me of you.’ She lists them (and let’s take into consideration this if before Dana became a righting nutjob). You can sing along and it may take you back to more innocent times too:   ‘snowdrops, daffodils, seagulls, cockleshells and wedding bells...Remind me of you.’

But alas no bearded ladies. Dana campaigned around antiabortion and traditional family values.

There’s no room at the inn for Dana International.  The unbearded Sharon Cohen (born Yaron Cohen): Israeli. Eurovision Winner: 1998, with the song Diva. First transgender artist to win the Eurovision Song Contest (as far as we know).

Nor for the bearded Eurovision icon, Conchita Wurst, transsexual,who won Eurovision 2014 for Austria with the song Rise Like a Phoenix.

Back to 1870 rural France (and back to the story) a bearded lady was something to see and that’s the storyline too. Inn owner, Abel (Benoît Magimel) whose journey from Dana to Dana International forms the emotional backbone of the film. We change not by so much what we see but by what we do.

Abel marries Rosalie for her dowry. A fresh-faced and beautiful vision. Her white wedding dress trails through the muck. She returns from the ceremony to her new home. Her father leaves her and tells her he’ll be back to visit in a year. ‘What if he rejects me?’ she cries.

Phew. Fat chance, I thought. She’s gorgeous. Like Abel I hadn’t been reading the small print. When he asks her to undress on their wedding night with the lights on, he’s shocked. Calls her ‘a monster’.

Beauty and the Beast in which she plays both parts. I guess we’ve got to confront our own prejudices is the perennial Eurovision message. Not sure that works so well in the real world, then or now. Wonderful film.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CVBVVGD6