There are plenty of good films opening this Boxing Day. Let me tell you about one of them – ROSALIE BLUM.

We are in Paris. Vincent, a lonely, nerdy young man – a hairdresser by profession –  is besotted by a woman- Rosalie Blum- he meets in a shop.

He feels that he knows her from  somehow, and he ‘can’t let go’ of the meeting. Vincent looks out for her and whenever he sees her, he follows her as far as he can. What he doesn’t know is that she has become aware of his ‘stalking’, for want of a better phrase.

Rosalie decides on a playful, unusual response/course of action. She ‘employs’ her niece to follow him  back. Her curiosity has been piqued and she is keen to find out more about her prospective paramour.

With this development, we now have the film’s three main characters – Vincent, played by Kyon Khojandi, Rosalie, played by Noemi Lvovsky, and Rosalie’s niece Aude, played by Alice Isaaz. They each give engaging performances.

This film plays out like a difficult puzzle. At first, we only have very little notion of what is going on, however as the film continues  we are given more and more pieces in the jigsaw, until we reach the end when we finally, a little magically, get the whole picture.

An artful, engrossing film, ROSALIE BLUM was directed, in his feature film debut, by Julien Rappeneau, and is the screen adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Camille Jourdy.