Mouchette

Sublime film from Robert Bresson!

Actually it was my first encounter with Bresson's work, five or six weeks ago. I was so eager to see it...Bresson's films ("Mouchette" and "Au hasard Balthazar") haven't disappointed me- to see the least!

"Mouchette" is such a pure film, so sublime. So powerful. When I saw this film, it really blew me away totally. So overwhelming. But now, weeks after that experience (I saw that films more than once, btw) it's still beginning to gain more power and emotion.

"Mouchette" has such overwhelming, graceful, brilliant images, shots and scenes. The opening scene may be the best ever: brilliant and pure, it tells everything you will see in the next hour and twenty minutes. The use of the music, sublime sounds of Monteverdi, is unique, powerful and brilliant. No more than- what is it?- ten seconds or so it can be heard. The opening scene is so short...

That's the power of Bresson: images, sounds, scenes are presented in such a brilliant way. When we are beginning to be attached to them, other images and shots are already presented. As a viewer, you can't really be attached totally by them. That's way these images, shots, scenes will be in your mind long after the film: all things, all scenes and situations, and especially all emotions (if they are shown at all) are shown in actually too short a time, that you, as a viewer, will be forced to "finish" them. You are forced to locate the emotions not shown, to locate the situations and details which are only suggestively shown. Bresson's editing is just brilliant, bt it may take some time before you are aware of that.

Some of the most brilliant scenes ever are presented here: Mouchette, forced to go into church by her father; Mouchette's brilliantly and superbly simple introduction to the viewer. Most notable for me, besides the ending scene of course, is the scene with Mouchette in the dodgem cars, having her only small feelings of joy and relieve. The expressions and emotions shown in this really magnificent scene, maybe the best and most emotional I've ever witnessed, are to diverse to even describe them. Just watch this scene...

Nadine Nortier, playing Mouchette, blew me away with her magnificent acting. So pure, sublime, graceful and heartfelt. One of the most striking peaces of "acting" I've ever seen...!

This superb film will be in my mind for ever, just like "Au hasard Balthazar". Nobody, not even the best like Dreyer, Ozu, Bergman and Tarkovsky, can present stories, images and "emotions" in such a superbly simple, transcendental and pure way as Bresson.

Masterpiece!

Mouchette is a young girl living in the country. Her mother is dying and her father does not take care of her. Mouchette remains silent in the face of the humiliations she undergoes. One night in a wood, she meets Arsene, the village poacher, who thinks he has just killed the local policeman. He tries to use Mouchette to build an alibi.

Robert Bresson knows how to make anything look beautiful. I always feel that black and white captures a scene better than color ever will, especially if the director (or cinematographer) knows how to really use the light and shadow Bresson gets it, and has always gotten it. He also seems to know ho to use children without exploiting them or making them overly sympathetic characters. The character of Mouchette is in many ways the queen of her own world... even if it may not be the best world.

Just like I remembered. The face of Nadine Nortier has not changed. The unbelievable "Mouchette" in this unforgettable Robert Bresson masterpiece. I hadn't seen the film since I was a teen ager. I saw it again last night and as if by magic it felt more contemporary today than it did then and then, let me tell you, it felt pretty real in its own rigorous lyrical style. What a shockingly wonderful effect a film like this could have on teen agers today. To stay with a character who takes us with nothing more than her naked truth through a landscape of absolute desolation. Her innocence intact, in spite of the outrage. Her ultimate act as breathtaking as anything we have ever seen on the screen, before or since. I tried to show the film to a group of twentysomethings, all of them walked away within the first fifteen minutes. All except one, a boy of 21, he had escaped Bosnia with his brother a few short years ago. As the film ended I looked at him. He was silent. He spoke without looking at me "can I see it again?" That's at the center of the experience that provides this film. "Mouchette" is meant for everyone, but it'll touch only some.

It seems entirely appropriate that the film opens with the metaphor of birds being snared as this seems to apply not only to Mouchette's life, but to Bresson's approach to the viewer as well.

For what, after all, is the director attempting to do here? Are we really to regard this as an unblinking gaze into the life of an abused, outcast girl? If so, why is Bresson so intent on excluding even the most fleeting moments of joy (or at least humor) that enter even the darkest of lives (I believe a philosopher once said "alas, joy too must have its day")? It is pretty telling that the one scene involving happiness for Mouchette is the most monotonous and lifeless in the picture (the bumper cars). Not only are we not allowed to experience her joy, but Bresson is careful to distance us from the real experience of her pain as well. This is done by the use of "gestures" (particularly prominent in Bresson's later films) that "signify" a character's experience rather than giving us the person's individualized emotional and visceral reactions to events. Thus the assault on Mouchette is shown in a distant, almost pantomimed manner, her relationship with her father is suggested by dropping coins in his hand, a disembodied hand slapping her face, etc. So, are we really to identify with Mouchette, to feel her pain, seeing how her experience of life intersects with our own in only the most symbolic, muted fashion? Is this really "compassion" and is this really Bresson's purpose?

Or is Mouchette a figure that Bresson uses (and dehumanizes), as literally every character in the movie uses her, to achieve other purposes? In this case the selling of a particular view of the world. One which sees the world as a snare, both in its joy and its pain, that is "saved" only by the (symbolic) suffering of the innocent, and transcended/transformed only by death. In other words a viewpoint that that advocates looking beyond (or turning away from)life to find "transcendent" truths. A view based on judgement rather than acceptance. And if this is "the truth" why must so much of what we experience as truth (such as joy, intimacy, occasional feelings of "oneness" with the world) be so forcibly excluded? Are these all really illusions, the world simply a snare? And without acceptance of ALL of Mouchette's reality can she,or any of us, really be redeemed?

Yes, Bresson is a meticulous, incisive, and occasionally powerful filmaker. But is he really honest? Are there some TRUTHS that he can't face (and so desperately restricts his view). In MOUCHETTE we are a little more aware of the puppeteer's strings than usual. 7 out of 10.

My Rating : 9/10

Bresson is heralded as an important filmmaker in world cinema. I absolutely love 'Mouchette' and it is a masterpiece of world cinema. It was on Tarkovsky's top 10 films list he made for Sight & Sound.

Bresson's other famous film Au Hasard Balthasar and Mouchette have common themes of abuse and negligence of the main characters. This film has the formal inevitability of tragedy, and is soaked through with a species of lyrical, desperate sadness. This quality, and the compelling aesthetic seriousness with which Bresson addresses his themes of suffering, compassion and the rural poor, are very remarkable indeed. Mouchette is a visionary, poetic film, fraught with elusive, unsettling meanings: a classic cinematic text.