Rosalie Goes Shopping

 

A quirky, kooky, colourful American indie about a family of endearing eccentrics? That’ll be about half of all US films released in the last decade then. But it also describes Rosalie Goes Shopping, Bagdad Café director Adlon’s 1989 satire of 80s consumerism, and a film which predates Wes Anderson and his ilk, but manages to be just as annoying. Bavarian housewife Rosalie (Sägebrecht) lives the American dream: she has a perfect husband (Davis), a gorgeous family, and a collection of credit cards and “rubbery” cheques so large she can feed her kids like kings and buy any of the goodies she sees in the endless commercials she devours. There are plenty of interesting ideas and visual flourishes, but this is heavy going stuff. No amount of gimmicks can disguise just how painfully contrived and ultimately boring the film is, with a flabby narrative and no characters to empathise with on any level. Stick to Joel Schumacher’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman.