Delinquency, Belgium-Style

Belgian director Patrice Toye's debut feature, Rosie, is different from most of the memorable Belgian movies that have made it to the States -- films like Man Bites Dog, Toto the Hero, and The Eighth Day. To begin with, it was shot in Flemish rather than French. But, more significantly, it is in direct contrast to its predecessors' fantastical tone. Toye presents a sensitive, up-close portrait of an adolescent girl with a wretched home life.

A Wretched Home Life: Aranka Coppens and Sara de Roo in Rosie.

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Written and directed by Patrice Toye. Starring Aranka Coppens, Sara de Roo, Dirk Roofthooft, Joost Wijnant, and Frank Vercruyssen. Opens Friday, Sept. 17, at the Lumiere

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More About

• Patrice Toye
• Aranka Coppens
• Sara de Roo
• Prisons
• Criminal Sentencing and Punishment

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When we first meet 13-year-old Rosie (Aranka Coppens), she is being admitted to a girls' detention center. We don't know what has brought her there, but the implication is of something dire. When one of the other inmates tells her, "They only send you here if you're crazy or you've killed someone," we wait and wait for Rosie to respond, to no avail.

We then see the past few months of Rosie's life in flashback: She lives with her mother, Irene (Sara de Roo), a 27-year-old hospital worker who insists that they pose as sisters so that no one will know that she had a baby at 14. That they have long maintained this secret only encourages Rosie to deal with life through deception and fantasy.

Irene is desperately searching for a dependable, loving mate, but her attempts have led to nothing more than a string of lovers. Into the gap in the household waltzes Irene's indigent, irresponsible brother, Michel (Frank Vercruyssen, a Billy Bob Thornton look-alike), who has his own, stricter, notions of how Rosie should be raised.

Through all this, Rosie's only solace is her budding relationship with Jimi (Joost Wijnant), a wild older boy whose romantic attachment to her is a bit creepy. As Michel makes life at home less and less bearable, Rosie escapes by joining Jimi in an escalating series of crimes, from some relatively harmless shoplifting to car theft and joy riding and even to kidnapping. Given what we know of Rosie's fate from the framing device, these adventures have an almost unbearable sense of dread about them.

Toye assembles a convincing portrayal of a messed-up kid powered in large part by Coppens' performance. But the final revelation isn't quite the surprise it should be; we've seen this sort of shtick many times before, and in the end it makes the film less satisfying than it at first promises.