Robert Bresson-Mouchette (1967)

Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. Faced with a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace in nature and daily routine, a respite from her economic and pubescent turmoil. An essential work of French filmmaking, Bresson’s hugely empathetic drama elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s great tragic figures. criterion.com



Mouchette is a young teenager living in the tough country. Her mother is going to die, and her father does not take care of her. Mouchette does not manage to express her rebellion against the humiliations she undergoes. One night, in the wood, she meets Arsene. Arsene is the poacher of the village. He thinks he has just killed Mathieu, the rural policeman. He tries to use Mouchette to build an alibi. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0061996/plotsummary)



Perhaps the most accessible of Robert Bresson's films, this story of a 14-year-old schoolgirl at the mercy of the world around her is like a melodrama stripped of flourish. Mouchette is an angry adolescent in the French provinces, the daughter of a drunken bootlegger and a dying, bedridden mother, a pariah in school and a figure of village gossip. She rebels in typically adolescent ways, lobbing mud at teasing classmates and defying wagging tongues with a willful stare, but her deep pain and loneliness pour from her hollow, sad eyes. (–Sean Axmaker - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)



There's no sentimentality in Bresson's portrait of village life, but for a few brief moments the film explodes with energy and emotion. Mouchette rides the bumper cars at a local fair, flirting with a young boy in loving bumps and deliberate rams, and her dour expression flowers in a smile as the fairground speakers blare a rock & roll tune… until her father's heavy hand slaps her back to reality. It's a moment unlike any other in a Bresson film, a joyous reprieve from the monotony of her life, but if the rest of her existence is glum and hopeless, the film is unexpectedly beautiful. The style is often fragmented–the film opens on a stunning play of hands, feet, and spying eyes as poacher and police both wait for their prey–but the beauty of the forests and meadows creates an idyllic naturalism that leavens Bresson's harsh portrait of the human condition. (–Sean Axmaker - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)



While you can certainly reconstruct the events portrayed in this film in terms of a standard plot structure, Bresson seems unwilling to plot out the story of Mouchette; in an interview contained on this dvd he says to a reporter that if he could sum up what happens to Mouchette it would be absurd to make a movie of it. He aims only to give the essentials, showing no more than what is absolutely necessary, with the implication that as viewers we feel as though the world we are shown piecemeal is much bigger and more complete than what we are permitted to see. It is not so much "Mouchette's story" that we are allowed to see as "Mouchette's world": a small world, with a few recognizable places, and recognizable routines, a few places she is permitted to go by a domineering father, and by a mother and brother whose needs place great but uncoerced demands upon her, and a few places she goes on her own, in acts of deliberate defiance, and at the same time acts of seeking someone who will not judge her or use her or place demands upon her. Because it feels like the world we enter with Bresson's films is not merely a story that is being told (even when, as in this case, it happens to be adapted from a story that had been written down by Georges Bernanos), it is something that endures, something that remains with the viewer (at least this one) long after the final image has faded. (amazon.com)



In all of his films, but this one feels unique and special in this respect, Bresson achieves something more than merely fiction. This is not an "enjoyable" filmgoing experience, and his aim is neither to uplift or to provide a message or entertain, but simply to show. This film is entertaining and surprising in its own way, but in the sense that it is an endless source of surprise and wonder when Bresson refuses to employ cliches of any sort and yet manages to make the events he portrays directly intelligible, without any hint of manipulation of audience emotions or expectations. Not to be missed by anyone who is interested in the potentials of film, or in the artistic recreation of life in both its everyday and its tragic dimensions. (amazon.com)