ON STRENGTH OF STAR AND SCRIPT, `ROSETTA' COMMANDS ATTENTION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

``Rosetta'' won the best picture prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and its amateur star, 18-year-old Emilie Dequenne, copped the fest's best actress award. This uncompromising Belgian drama certainly earned its accolades - it's raw and exquisitely controlled at the same time, and Dequenne's fierce, focused energy is a relentless marvel.

But none of this means that the film is anything akin to a pleasant experience.

With a frenzied, tightly framed hand-held camera that quickly achieves that delightful ``Blair Witch'' nausea effect, directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne plunge us into the desperate world of Dequenne's Rosetta. A rough-edged adolescent who lives in a grimy trailer with her near-catatonically alcoholic mom (Anne Yernaux), Rosetta longs for the consistency that a job - any job - would bring to her life.

Trouble is, no matter how hard she works, she can't keep one. We initially see her charging frantically through a factory, running from the supervisor who wants to lay her off. She hides and fights him tooth and nail, as if he were trying to steal her soul (which, by her reckoning, he is).

Wandering the streets of a grubby industrial town, she gets brief work from a waffle stand entrepreneur who then has to replace her with his no-account son. One of the guy's clerks, Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), takes a shine to Rosetta, but she's more interested in appropriating his job than responding to his affection. In one remarkable scene, Riquet falls into a muddy canal, and she seriously contemplates letting him drown for the outside hope of a minimum wage.

Earlier, Rosetta herself had been flung into the same slippery muck by a mother who didn't wish to visit a rehab facility. Flopping about and crying ``I can't get out'' as the older woman disappears in search of her next bottle, the moment pretty much sums up the girl's life in one vivid, resonant symbol.

Furious as Dequenne's performance often is, it is also marked by steadying (yet heartbreaking) periods of self-made busywork. Rosetta trolls for fish she throws back, obsesses over boots she hides in wooded dugouts and tries to do anything else that can seem like work, or can at least momentarily distract her from the awfulness she otherwise breathes. It's an impressively complete and modulated performance, one of the few marked by emotional outbursts that is actually enriched by quieter moments.

The Dardenne brothers, whose last film was the impressive ``La Promesse,'' continue their startlingly moral, uncondescending fascination with contemporary capitalism's born rejects here. They never ask us to cry for Rosetta - she's too obnoxious for that - yet there's narry a second when she doesn't earn our sympathy. You wish that she could earn a decent living with similar efficiency.

And many will wish that they'd never been exposed to such a convincingly dire life. There is a flurry of irresponsible-mom/practical-daughter movies out at the moment. ``Anywhere But Here'' is pure Hollywood fakery, and ``Tumbleweeds,'' though more honest, lets actresses indulge wayward theatricality far too often.

``Rosetta'' is far and away the most truthful, unflinching and creative of the three - the idea that Rosetta's overdeveloped sense of responsibility is a form of pathology is, in and of itself, a brilliant notion. The film deserves nothing but praise for these qualities. Sitting through it, of course, is another matter entirely.

The facts

The film: ``Rosetta'' (R; language, violence).

The stars: Emilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Anne Yernaux, Olivier Gourmet.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Produced by the Dardennes and Michele and Laurent Petin. Released by USA Films.

Running time: One hour, 35 minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

Our rating: Three stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Emilie Dequenne is a girl desperate for a job in ``Rosetta.''