Mouchette (1970)

Bresson is known for heartbreaking films such as Au Hasard Balthazar but I believe he got the best of himself with this film. As most of Bresson, the film uses the characters hands and behavior to "explain" them. Mouchette's life is a tragedy: she suffers but yet she will not complain. She has no future, she is a lost person in the world. Even thought Bresson's style may seem too cold, it may be, but it is incredibly affective. Bresson made a film about a tragedy that is not just from this suffered and misunderstood young girl but of a lot of persons: wanting to be accepted but humiliation is what she receives as an answer. "Mouchette" is one of the most powerful films in cinema history, it is moving without being forced and one of the most well developed tragic characters from cinema.

This film, based on the novel by G. Bernanos, is a moving portrait of an outcast. Mouchette is a member of a poor family. Her mother is sick and her father survives only by poaching and smuggling. She is badly dressed and has no genuine footwear (a painted bird). She is continuously humiliated and insulted by other kids and by those who wield a certain power in the village, like her teacher or the 'Christian' bourgeoisie. Yet, she is the embodiment of real Christian virtues such as poverty and innocence. The purity of her feelings is beautifully illustrated in the sequence of the fair with its bumper cars. In her story 'That particular Summer', Marie Cardinal (who plays the mother in this movie) paints a far from hagiographic portrait of Bresson: an awkward, insufferable and callous man. Nevertheless, with his sober style, (apparently) without any passion and a far cry from big theatrical gestures, Robert Bresson created a really disturbing masterpiece. He stigmatizes in a fierce way the human community, which tramples mercilessly on the underprivileged. A must see.

"Mouchette" explores the meanness of adolescence, showing us a series of mundane shocks and insults that culminate in disaster. The power here lies not so much in the dramatic - Nadine Nortier as Mouchette does not give up much, emotionally. Mouchette tries to fit in, please her father, have a boyfriend - wanting all the things that a normal teen wants. She is, however, awkward and abused, left mostly to her own devices, and does not understand how to exist in the world. Her attempts to find acceptance and meaning inexorably fail, leaving Mouchette ultimately lost and empty. Her emotional barrenness, resulting from the ways her little world failed her, bit by bit, finally, is the point of this film, and the reason that it works as a spiritual tragedy. Filmed simply and brilliantly, this is a masterpiece.

A beautiful film with superb photography. The story of a young girl who has to care for a dying mother in a small village in France.She is shunned by everyone. She is raped and used and rejected.But her simple innocence and beauty shines through. It is like Fat Girl a film without much faith in humanity without hope. The scenes of the poacher and the hunter the girl lost in the woods in the storm are breathtaking.The bullying by her school teacher and followed by her beautiful singing where great. Her simple goodness and total exclusion is heart wrenching.The ending like in Fat Girl is shocking but fitting. Good film.