The Losing of Mary Rose Foster

By Kristen Englehardt

[1] One of the most emotionally charged scenes in Mark Rydell's The Rose occurs just before Mary Rose Foster's final concert in her hometown. Throughout the entirety of the film Rose has been depicted as an overworked, partied-out singer who wants nothing more than to take a break from everything going on around her. The purpose of the scene is to show viewers what rock bottom really looks like. Rose has reached her lowest point. Rudge has fired her, threatening to cancel her hometown concert. Houston has left, no longer able to put up with the “grenade range” that is her volatile life. She has achieved fame and fortune, yet people from her childhood fail to recognize her. Rose is utterly alone. It is this feeling of loneliness -- of lovelessness -- that she fears the most. This scene takes that fear and twists into an ugliness that is ultimately Rose's undoing. Her need to conquer, to rid herself of any vulnerability, leads her to push away her family and escape into a drug-induced haze that kills off the final remnants of Mary Rose, leaving behind the empty, tattered shell that is The Rose.

[2] The scene is composed to exemplify Rose's downward spiral. The scene begins as Rose frantically scrambles into a phone booth in the parking lot of her former high school. She digs through her bag searching for her change purse discarding its contents until she finds what it is she needs. This frenzied search is almost a perfect metaphor of her more personal search for comfort and inner peace. Viewers see the singer, her tear-stained face streaked with mascara, huddled in the booth, begging the operator for help. Her plan? To surrender to Rudge's browbeating and accept his terms, that she become The Rose, the figure-head of a multi-million dollar business. As she awaits his arrival to shepard her away to yet another concert, she sets about making the painful transition, and the audience watches Rose slip further and further away. She picks up the phone one last time and calls her family to say her final farewell, asking her parents not to come to the show, placating them with “I love you's” and promises of visits soon. Director Rydell chose to depict this scene as a one-sided conversation between the character of Rose and the phone in her hand, only further demonstrating how truly alone she is. This sense of loneliness is further compounded as the camera pans out to show Rose standing all alone in the phone booth as the darkness presses in on her.

[3] It is in this darkness, this sense of emptiness, that Rose turns to drugs to take away her pain. Why shouldn't she? She's seen what her life is like since she's been clean. Up until this moment in the film Rose has been heroin-free, and her life was none the better for it. Same frantic pace, same heartache, all that's changed is that rather than heroin, she has self-medicated with alcohol. So what's to stop her? Rydell's depiction of Rose's fall is so poignantly composed that viewers can almost see these thoughts as they pass across her tortured face. It is truly an introspective look at the decomposition of a young woman. The camera pans away as Rose injects herself with the mind-altering drug. This act of destruction is unknown to the audience until the screen focuses in on the floor of the booth to see the needle fall down around her feet. A metaphorical representation of Rose's arrival at “rock bottom."

[4] The already tragic scene continues to tug at the heart strings of its viewers as the camera shows Rose, still standing in the phone booth clutching her stage costume, cradling it to her tear-soaked face. These are the last remaining moments of Mary Rose. The sparkling, sequined confection is not a representation of the girl she remembers, it is a symbol of The Rose. Her tears continue to fall as she realizes this will be her end. The moment she slips that dress over her head she will make the final transition into becoming The Rose -- an icon of sex, drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll -- all alone in the company of thousands. No matter where she goes from here Mary Rose is gone; The Rose may live on for the time being, but this is the moment of the death of Mary Rose Foster.