The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar

A Wes-Anderson short-ish Ronald Dahl story, with everyone in it. Or rather every male actor, as women are only occasional and background. Which adds to the usual Anderson stylised groove. A wealthy man learns of a secret skill, which he eventually acquires: he can see without using his eyes. All of this works out, and he dies very rich, establishing many altruistic foundations which make the world a better place.

Rosalie

Another story-as-fable, based on a true story of a (probably early / mid 19c) French woman who from birth grew facial and body hair like a man. When her husband, who’s been deceived by Rosalie and her father) finds this out, his anger is tempered by his wife’s decision to grow her hair as a ‘freak’ to drum up business for his failing café. This works, and all the locals are accepting and perfectly happy with this bearded woman running the bar. It could have ended here, but we’re only half way through… The local squire, struggling with his confused feelings of desire for Rosalie, engineers a change of attitude, and the locals now start spurning her.

Immediately afterwards I was disappointed by how the film ended (with Rosalie leaping off a bridge into a river, and her husband – who we learnt earlier can’t swim – following her. We might think he’s attempting a rescue, but no, they sink together. I felt it was a cliché.

On reflection, however, I now see the film – a personal interpretation perhaps – as an allegory of the ways in which the EDI agenda was by many initially welcomed, but is perhaps beginning now, in some quarters, to feel a backlash.

How they are related

Both Henry and Rosalie seek to improve the world, Henry through an egotistic quest for personal power (which he then uses altruistically), Rosalie through the reverse: a sacrificial and potentially humiliating/disastrous parading of her unusual physiology. Henry succeeds; Rosalie doesn’t – at least in her lifetime.