‘It’s never simple to be a woman,’ Rosalie Deluc tells a journalist when asked how people react to her unexpectedly hirsute appearance. Loosely inspired by the life of celebrated bearded lady Clémentine Delait, the sophomore film from French director Stéphanie Di Giusto (The Dancer) tells a subversive yet relatable story of standing out from the crowd. Set in a mill town in 1870s Brittany, Rosalie follows the titular trailblazer (beautifully played by Finnish-French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz from Only The Animals) as she’s married off to middle-aged tavern owner Abel (a tormented Benoît Magimel).

Abel, it transpires, is only in it for the dowry which puts a dent in his debt to the mill’s owner Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay), a hard-hearted man who won’t allow his workers to drink in Abel’s establishment and is pressuring him to sell up. On the couple’s wedding night, Abel is in for the surprise of his life, discovering that the youthful, stereotypically feminine Rosalie is covered in an abundance of body hair, and that she has been shaving her face to fit in.

Abel’s reaction is one of bafflement and revulsion, resulting in Rosalie spending a night sleeping rough. However, on her return she resolves to embrace her idiosyncrasy and, after unveiling her true, unshaven self to the tavern’s gobsmacked clientele, Rosalie becomes a sensation, while her indomitable character and newfound pride in her appearance starts to win Abel around. Sadly, such acceptance is short-lived.

Rosalie is fairytale-esque in its fatalism and faintly magical air, with its heroine cutting a pristine, princess-like figure in impoverished environs, and depicted as both beauty and beast. The film is very astute on the destructive impact of shame and the confusion and conflict Rosalie provokes in those around her, without overly demonising anyone. It shows us men who have been physically and mentally scarred by war and are curious at first, but who inevitably surrender themselves to the will of the baying mob. Not so long ago this material would have been mined for laughs in an attempt to ease an audience’s discomfort, but Di Giusto plays it straight, and her film is all the better for it. Sensitively shot by Christos Voudouris, using a soft, melancholic palette, Rosalie’s emotional impact is enhanced by Hania Rani’s elegant orchestral score, which movingly reflects our heroine’s hopes, fears and distress.

Difference will always stir up hate in the hearts of some, and there are days where it doesn’t feel like we’ve made a whole lot of progress. With the debate on who is allowed to call themselves a woman raging and female body hair still taboo, Rosalie may be set in a different century, but it speaks powerfully to our time.

Rosalie is in cinemas from Friday 7 June.