‘Rose’ Review: A Gender-Bending Sandra Hüller Astounds in a 17th-Century Historical Fiction Knockout of Devastating Power

You just had to be there when writer/director Markus Schleinzer debuted with “Michael” in 2011. The former casting director of Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner, Schleinzer’s debut was not a pretty sit, one that outdoes “Room” to this day in the annals of movies about ritualistic abuse happening under confinement: Seemingly inspired by Austria’s notorious case of Josef Fritzl, who kept a family in captivity, “Michael” concentrated on a pedophile who abducts a 10-year-old boy and keeps him locked in a soundproof room in his basement.

Where that film pushed the limits of austerity and asceticism in terms of rigorous formal control and the utter depletion of emotional affect, Schleinzer’s third feature after “Michael” and the 18th-century European slave trade epic “Angelo” uses that style to, this time, actually devastating aims. With a despairing soul and rage roiling in its heart, the starkly composed and mesmerizing “Rose” stars Sandra Hüller as a 17th-century German soldier who’s survived a bullet to the face and resulting disfigurement circa the end of the Hundred Years War. She’s also learned to disguise herself as a man as a means to move more fluidly through the world.

Not since Sally Potter’s breakout feature “Orlando” has a film explored gender privilege so effectively through a historical lens and via a singularly astounding European actress (then, it was Tilda Swinton) to such powerful effect. Playing Rose as a kind of gender-bending Joan d’Arc who will inevitably face plenty of persecution of her own, Oscar-nominated “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest” star Hüller is tremendous in a role that allows writer/director Schleinzer to transcend the it-puts-the-austerity-in-Austria trappings of his compatriots; “Rose” is nothing short of shattering, and the centrifugal force of Hüller will, by the end, suck you into all her protagonist’s hurt. It’s an achievement built entirely upon emotional elisions, in almost imperceptible modulations of gesture and expression — especially in a final scene that cuts to black like a guillotine.

“What joy it brings me to imagine what else is possible,” says Rose, a seeming philosophy of a way of movement through life, a life where she’s found “more freedom with trousers,” binding her breasts and even wearing strap-ons deemed later as the “horn” and the “spike” when called for — which inevitably means any acts of penetration must be done from behind. Rose’s appearance — bulleted, scar-tissued, shorn of any feminine silhouette whatsoever — passes enough for a man’s that she’s able to wend her way into a farming community by conniving means after burdening another battle.

Referred to only as “the soldier” by the villagers, or “the master” by her future stablehands, Rose leverages her agrestic prowess into heading up a farm in a rural German Protestant village, a farm she claims is rightfully her own. In a ruse that, for lack of a more astute reference point here, feels very Don Draper-coded), Rose poses as the dear male soldier who died next to her in battle, figuring why waste the deeds to perfectly decent land.

The land, Rose is told, is more challenging than expected, the seasons wounding, the woods stalked by bears. A surly local framer (Godehard Giese) has offered Rose one of his five daughters, with Rose opting for the eldest, who it’s strongly implied has been sexually assaulted by her father; this is, after all, a world where submitting to assault is compulsory, where attacks on women or anyone evincing gender or social difference are just another day on the farm. Thus, the only freedom women can find is in each other, and unbeknownst to Suzanna (Caro Braun), Rose is using her as safe harbor to evade the repressive structures of being a woman. A series of events, from an unexpected pregnany to a bee sting, send the town into quiet hysteria even while Rose and Suzanna’s initially transaction relationship takes a understated shift toward tacit understanding and, maybe, meaningful companionship.

To that end, “Rose” turns out to be a bracingly queer-political drama hiding in plainer clothes, and one far afield from any sort of agitprop, its profound statements on gender and sexual identity as sneakily engulfing as a crop infestation. Similarly to how queer individuals are portrayed in historical dramas as living their freest lives in the shadows, Schleinzer’s screenplay, which is based on similar stories of women diguised as women throughout Europe’s past, alludes to what could look like something like a private idyll for Suzanna and Rose. But it’s one that, once the townsfolk catch wind of what could actually be between Rose’s legs, is met with the proverbial (and not so proverbial) pitchforks and torches. You could certainly embrace “Rose” as a trans allegory, but as tale of noncomformity, it’s appropriately open to a multiplicity of readings. But one reading not up for date: Schleinzer is a master craftsman in total, unclenching control of his material from start to crushing finish.

Also not to be left out of the all the praise deserving of this film: Norwegian-Irish singer/songwriter Tara Nome Doyle’s entirely a cappella score, which gives “Rose” the hallowed feeling of something holy, but also of history’s ghosts in the hall passing through. Visually, “Rose” is sculpted to the molecular level in black-and-white by Schleinzer’s returning cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, who places viewers in the mind of Carl Theodor Dreyer well before Hüller’s performance invokes Maria Falconetti as cinema’s most quintessential martyr. Schleinzer constructs a canny bait and switch: The film’s visual language, agrarian setting, and seeming emotional distance at the outset promise a harshly unfeeling European arthouse exercise. Until it isn’t. Until Hüller annihilates your heart.

Grade: A-

“Rose” premiered at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.