Mouchette (1967) User Reviews (52)

Mouchette got a raw deal

[dbdumonteil · 9/10 · 9 September 2007]

Sixteen years after having successfully exploited Georges Bernanos' universe for his "Journal d'Un Curé De Campagne" (1951), Robert Bresson appropriates once again another book by the French writer: "Mouchette" for a very personal, stylish rendering and a canonical film about stolen childhood. The filmmaker always supported that he'd prefer a film to be felt rather than to be understood. Needless to say we leave the projection with a big emotion inside us and we also feel helpless about Mouchette' terrible life. According to Bresson, Mouchette's tragic fate enabled him to put forward "misery, cruelty. They're everywhere: wars, tortures, murders".

The film starts with Arsène's and the gamekeeper's eyes staring at quails and partridges that desperately try to free themselves from snares. This harrowing introduction sequence sets the scene for what follows after wards. How not to think of a metaphor for Mouchette's life that offers her no horizon and no hope? This teenage girl is all alone and in spite of her young age, she has to take care of her sick mother, her alcoholic father and her baby brother. She goes to school but feels rejected by her female fellow students, notably when school's over, they stone her. It's the same thing every day and Mouchette is trapped in her loneliness. That's why the sequence at the fair comes as a sort of relief for her. The scene at the bumper cars provides her momentary solace and joy. Then, the key sequence with Arsène will make her open her eyes about what she really wants. In spite of her poverty and solitude, Mouchette needs to love but where to find it in a hostile world?

Mouchette strongly belongs to the Bressonian world. She's an outcast and she can't integrate herself to her surrounding. Once again, Bresson underscores the opposition between a pure, subjective person and an objective, hostile world in a sparse, minimal directing with a supremacy granted to images and sounds and the evident symbols they convey. An eloquent example would be when the little girl is all alone in the country and can hear the sound of guns and can see rabbits running or dying. She hasn't got a friend or even one member of her family to talk to. When she wants to tell her mother what Arsène did to her, she dies. Fate dogs her. There's no room for the weak and there's one last exit left... Bresson's austere, intensely visual making fits the story and its themes like a glove and if you don't feel anything during the last sequence, you have a heart of stone.

Bresson's best and most accessible (possible spoiler)

[alice liddell · 9/10 · 22 March 2000]

In a film as inexorable and irrevocable as this, it is appropriate that Bresson's masterpiece should begin with an elaborate rite. The film actually opens with the heroine stating her anguish calmly to the camera, and the bizarrely Baroqued-up strains of Monteverdi. But the action begins in a green space of remarkable beauty, adjacent to the 'civilisation' of the village. It is an overgrown, profusely sparse space, in which one man sets up a wire trap, watched by another. A pigeon is caught in the trap, and we watch his terrified, bewildered struggle for agonised moments. The second man follows the bird, we assume to finish him off, and sets him free. He looks at the second man, who scarpers.

These two men are a poacher and a gamekeeper, but Bresson doesn't tell us until after this sequence. Although their roles may be obvious, there is a ritual solemnity about the action, characters moving and behaving to seemingly pre-ordained rules, in an environment that is supposed to be realistic (no music; natural sounds etc.) but seems unworldly, stripped bare. The sequence is loaded with symbolic detail, with a cruel foretelling of the plot to come that takes on the power of Greek myth, an intriguing starting point for the very Catholic Bresson's film.

Although Bresson's austere films are defended by his admirers as being full of suppressed passion, it's hard to fully engage with them. They are fragmentary (e.g. in the way he films parts of the body that seem to deconstruct it, rather than its familiar wholeness; the way the plots are constructed not by conventional flow, but the build up of episodes), and yet his films are full of contradictory connections, patterns, rhythms whether real or imaginary that, perhaps (I'm no theologian) approximate the underlying Catholic impact.

The reason MOUCHETTE is his most appealing film is that it is in many ways more conventional than most. It's the story of an adolescent girl living in a grim, parched provencal village, unloved by her parents, mocked by her schoolmates, brutally beaten by her teachers. She clumps around in heavy shoes that make her look disabled, and there is unexpected comedy when, every day after school, she hides behind a hedge and hurls, with unerring accuracy, mud at the popular girls, with their perfumes and motorbike-owning boyfriends. Parallel to this story is that of the gamekeeper and the poacher, both fighting over the same woman.

The film initially consists of revelatory vignettes, with little apparent plot point, revealing the spiritual void of provincial France, with its medieval rituals and codes, hatreds, unloving Churches, pinched villagers, heavy parched stones. Mouchette's mother is dying, her father and brother involved in smuggling. One connecting pattern in the film, foreshadowing L'ARGENT, is that of money, a blasphemous matrix that only alienates its practitioners. There are some brief snatches of relief, such as Mouchette playing bumping cars at a fairground, but an incipient reaching for companionship is harshly beaten away by her father.

This loveless, sterile, man-made community is seemingly contrasted with the neighbouring countryside. Mouchette gets lost one night in the forest, and the thundering cyclone seems to unleash an almost Romantic expressivity, revealing Mouchette's feelings that are usually curtailed in the social realm (the fact that this may by pathetic sympathy and subjective is shown in two subsequent denials of the cyclone's power). Her seeming freedom is linked to losing a burdenous shoe.

But 'civilisation' is never far away, and the medieval fued of honour is pushed to this natural realm. Bresson cuts the outcome of the two men's drunken meeting, and the characters' own ignorance leads to misinterpretation and misinformation that crucially decide Mouchette's fate. The short, elliptical style now gives way to two extended, gendered set-pieces, one with Arsene the poacher and possible murderer, one with her dying mother. This two-fold division presumably has religious or Platonic significance, the rest of us can watch the dreadful plight of a young girl who so wants to belong that she is prepared to abet a killer, get raped and see her mother die in the space of a couple of hours. Predictably, the attempt of this outsider to belong results in her being cast out as a slut, leaving seemingly only one heartbreaking option open to her.

Mouchette is a classic movie outsider, but she is not subversive. Her presence is marginalised even in her own film - although she serves to expose the fundamental evil and disruption underlying so-called 'tight' communities. The treatments of rape and the links of the female with death, not fertility, seem troubling - Bresson's attack on a 'patriarchal' society seems to bemoan the arrogant usurping of the real Patriarch.

This is how JEAN DE FLORETTE should have been filmed - shorn of heritage accoutrements, provincial France is shown to be an unlovely hell. With all the discussion of Bresson's philosophical power, it shouldn't be forgotten that he has compelling narrative gifts - and even uses the notion of story as the crucial plot motor - Mouchette acts on the erroneous story she's told by Arsene, on the creation of a world through mere words - and her lack of either narrative control or critical power results in her downfall.

"compassionate", "unflinching", or just a snare?

[muddlyjames · 7/10 · 5 January 2002]

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.

The Face of Nadine Nortier

[marcosaguado · 10/10 · 11 March 2005]

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.

A genius at his most beautiful

[B Benton-2 · 10/10 · 18 December 2000]

Never before has cinema been this simple and honest. No one makes films with more emotion than Bresson and no one puts less emotion in their films than he. I could cite so many Bressonian cliches and talk of his uniquely personal style which by 1967 was firmly established, especially since he had abandoned the voice-over he used in the 50s. I will point out his use of sound and approach to acting which remain so distinctive and by now so familiar. There is nothing in Mouchette that is new, especially after Balthazar, what remains is the story of Mouchette, told with the utter grace and passion that makes this film a masterpiece that transcends technique, even cinema itself, and makes most cinema look frivolous in the process.

Finally I must mention the films ending, which I rank with that of Balthazar as the most beautiful I have seen.

You can trust me ... I detest them'

[bateauivre11 · 3 March 2003]

Stories of childhood have often been tempered with the melancholic yearning of lost innocence (as in Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants) or the profound weight of human misery (as in Robert Bresson's Mouchette). -An opinion in a filme web - Director Robert Bresson disliked many things like, greed, shallowness, insincerity His filmes and his characters are surrounded by indifference,INJUSTICE and cruelty.and Mouchette the intransigent anti heroine of this remarkable filme knows about that.In one scene Mouchette said something,(to the man he later assaulted her), that really strikes me: `You can trust me ... I detest them' Every great film has its unforgetable moments in this one is Mouchette's night in the woods,and later over the edge and into the water… Mouchette went through a lot of bad things,the adults in this filme are just awful,one woman tells to her `You are bad.... You have evil in your eyes.' Bresson said: `Mouchette offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations.' –That's it… the Master has spoken.

Poverty, Loneliness, Loss & Abuse...

[Xstal · 8/10 · 19 July 2020]

... all suffered by a young girl and presented through the unique lens of Robert Bresson. A timeless story that could be replicated the world over today sadly, either we don't learn or we don't care and while that's the case, the Mouchettes of this world will be forever pulled under.

Reflecting the limits of human dignity

[Davor_Blazevic_1959 · 8/10 · 31 December 2018]

By 1967, in his already 24 years long career as film director, French cineaste Robert Bresson has only shot seven feature-length movies. Nevertheless, he's been already regarded as a groundbreaking filmmaker. Small in volume, yet of great importance, his oeuvre has gained interest throughout the film world, especially among film critics.

For his 8th film, protestant Bresson has chosen another novel by catholic Georges Bernanos, whose Diary of a Country Priest he had turned into a film in 1950. Film is based on the story of Mouchette, a 14-year-old girl who was driven to her tragic end by the lack of love from adults she knew. "Distraught by the lack of understanding shown by her father, a petty smuggler who is almost always drunk, and upset by the silent suffering of her mother, Mouchette - in silent, stubborn anger - refuses any kind of guidance. Her fellow pupils avoid her, and her teacher mistakes her for being willful and stubborn. Thus Mouchette fails to find the love she yearns for, and a poacher whom she hesitantly trusts, eventually rapes her."

Summarised in a few words it may sound like a shocking story, but for Robert Bresson it's just a new starting point to reflect the limits of human dignity.

Beautiful As Always

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 6 April 2016]

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.

Sublime, Pure, Magnificent

[mflamman · 10/10 · 26 February 2004]

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!

simplistically and delicately shot

[louise53 · 7/10 · 10 November 2006]

'Mouchette' is a film shot simplistically and delicately, which captures the angst and despair of a 14 year old girl.

The opening sequence entails the capture of a bird in a poachers trap; we witness long length shots and intense close-ups of a gamekeeper spying on the poacher. Only natural sounds of footsteps and rustling trees are audible. Instantly, we could argue this unpleasant image of the trapped bird, parallels the entrapment of Mouchette in her abandoned life. Interestingly the poacher in these scenes, Arsene, later traps Mouchette in luring her into a false sense of security, reinforcing his role as a poacher.

From the beginning, Bresson's attention to realistic natural diegetic sounds emulates Mouchette's destitute, impoverished lifestyle. This technique also enables the audience to focus primarily on the visuals. Dialogue is dispersed through the film and appears in only brief quantities. The raw stark shots of Mouchette's struggle, for example, tending to her mother, sitting alone in the forest and walking home alone after school contrast with the brief moment at the funfair in which she evades the reality of her life. I could not help but differentiate these busy, active shots, accompanied by an upbeat diegetic soundtrack and close-ups of Mouchette's happiness from her solidarity before and after this sequence. This moment, the only point where we see her physically and emotionally content, is taken from her suddenly and becomes one of our first reflections on our sympathy for her. Added to this are the recurring medium close-ups of Mouchette's frown, which I found prominent when reflecting on the film.

I think many people who have seen 'Mouchette' will note that although the closing sequence is sudden and perhaps bleak, you cannot help feeling a sense of catharsis due to the ending of Mouchette's suffering.

Mouchetts the perfect Bresson

[makpet · 10/10 · 26 August 2006]

Bresson one of the true architects of modern cinema found in this story the perfect distillation of form and content coupling his pared down style with the poignant story of a young french girl trying to live through impoverished circumstances and doing her best to survive. Being one of my heroes I have always had nothing but total respect for the way he intellectualized every aspect of film-making without denuding it of emotional impact. A chemist of cinematic ingenuity there will never be a more profoundly personal look at cinema than that of Bresson. May the film-makers of today at least make the effort to rob from this man. Viva Bresson!

Has qualities, but fails to move me emotionally due to poetic attempts

[bartkl-1 · 6/10 · 20 August 2013]

After I watched Bresson's "Au Hasard Balthazar" a few years ago, I was advised by a friend to watch "Mouchette" next. I told him I wasn't particularly struck by the character development and the portrayal of humans and emotions in the former, and learned that I had the exact same problems with the latter.

The girl is amazing. Her justified rebellious behavior and her unique and authentic appearance really shine in this movie. Also, the photography in the film is very well done, as I would have dared to expect from Bresson. Technically, this movie certainly is very good.

However, the way people interact in this movie often doesn't make sense to me. And I know movies aren't obligated to be realistic, but this movie certainly has a lot of ingredients on board to make you believe it's trying to be realistic. It's not an absurd or surrealistic film where you won't have to expect to be able to completely understand emotions and social situations. The consequence is - to me at least - that my compassion doesn't know how to handle the situation. First something sad happens, and I get moved, but then there's weird silences or poetic expressions (not necessarily verbal) which don't fit the realistic context and interrupt the immersion if you ask me.

Another friend of mine with whom I discussed this topic mentioned a good point however: perhaps you should let go of the expectation to be moved emotionally. Doesn't the movie just try to display the story, possibly telling you to accept life for what it is without necessarily trying to move you? Well observed, it's possible. I still believe the movie could benefit strongly if it was more emotionally involving though.

I have had this discussion with a lot of people about several movies, and it seems nobody either understands or agrees with me on this subject. Therefore, I'm even more aware of how subjective this point of view is. Obviously, this movie isn't a classic for no reason and I'm sure it has plenty of qualities that let people appreciate it so much. Not entirely my cup of tea though.

Mouchette mucks about too much

[pztoi1 · 4/10 · 8 June 2012]

My Bresson baptism, with Mouchette: and it underwhelms. I'm sure I picked up Mouchette on strong recommendations: but it backfired.

Shot in black and white (1967), perhaps to accentuate the despair and and hopelessness of the theme, is a tactical mistake. I'm sure there are things you can do with black and white to accentuate particular objects, emotions, situations: as in Hitchcock's movies. Here, we are treated to a washed out monotone of colour which does nothing for the many scenes shot in apparently verdant woods. Contrast was poor throughout, sharpness non existent: colour was a mismanagement.

Nadine Nortier is miscast as Mouchette. She has presence, but no qualia. Utterly emotionless throughout, even when she is crying, less of an enigma and more of a non person. What is she thinking, what is she about, what makes her tick? The blank canvass of her acting output throws up no answers. Marie Cardinal as her mother, in only a few short scenes with few words does a much better job of fleshing out a character: we, as the audience, get what she is about: a disillusioned, weary woman: physically and spiritually ill. Mistreated by life and men, she is ready to depart this life. Her agony , in fact her life story is played out beautifully in an understated way by Cardinal. Nortier does not come even close with her performance.

Mouchette is supposed to be a suffering martyr of some kind, but 'm not sure why. Yes, the family is poor, mum is sick and dad goes out at night to deal in contraband, but is that enough to warp your mind and deaden your soul? Why does she refuse to sing in school and throw mud at her schoolmates? Bresson is just sloppy here: a few more psychological angle shots wouldn't have been amis, just to really set the background on Mouchette's despair.

A plot development sees Mouchette out in the woods late at night, huddled under a tree. She is found by Arsene, the village daredevil, who first 'rescues' her from the rain, then walks her back to the village, and to his house, where a little incongruously because there was no build up to this, rapes her. And Mouchette likes it. In fact the next day she alludes to him as 'her lover'. Yes, she is sadly misused here.

Then, one hour into the film, a host of secondary characters start popping up for the first time. Mouchette's mother dies on the morning after her rape, and as Mouchette walks about town to get milk, various personages make an appearance. All of them presume to help her with hand me downs and end up calling her a slut and wicked. For no particular reason at all. This grated on my nerves a bit: first, the glut of personalities piled up all at once: what about pacing, Bresson? Then, their allegations towards Mouchette. If she is indeed a slut, why weren't we shown it, why wasn't it alluded before: why spring it up out of the blue. Of course, this may be a subtle reference to the fact Mouchette enjoyed her rape, but of course the townfolk can't know this. The only thing this film had going for it is the ending. As Mouchette tumbles down a river bank and literally plops into the river, the camera stays put for about thirty seconds on the water, before fading out. Does Mouchette resurface, or is she dead?

A time for things to disperse again II

[chaos-rampant · 5 March 2016]

Among the best things that can happen to me as a viewer is to watch a filmmaker grow into mastery, and I've just gone through a series of viewing where Bresson grew before my eyes. He wasn't a master before Balthazar in my estimation but he was one now.

See, he had started with ambitious work in Diary of a Priest, but something must have troubled him, the spiritual search was coming off as emotional anguish, resulting in sentimentality. His next three were all about finding ways to quell this, fasting the eye, muting the emotion.

This is all the more reason to celebrate him, because it could have gone either way. He could have turned out film after film where he mutes expression and turns actors into bare stumps and called it pure. But if this was purity, where was the life in which the pure is woven through? Bresson matters I believe because he left the stone floor of his ascetic phase to grow into this, his sculpting phase.

This is a sculpture of moving image and sound, even more so than Balthazar, even more purely about the rooms and spaces in which a young girl faces the duplicity of life. It's all in how he chisels the air with the camera, he does this in three parts.

The day before, with its moments of small everyday cruelty and unexpected kindness alike. She has a beautiful voice but won't sing with her classmates until forced, a passing woman unexpectedly gives her money for the bumping cars, but her dalliance with a boy is cut short and she has to go sit with her father. It's heart-aching because all she needs is someone to mind her and no one does outside of making her behave how they want to, most of us have been savaged this way as kids.

The night of unfathomable emotions out in the woods, and look how masterfully. Why she does what she does in the cabin, why she swears to protect his secret and professes love, perhaps intuitively protecting herself, perhaps asserting herself against authority, this is all as unfathomable as why the man goes back out to commit violence. It's all in that shot where the two men laugh, for no reason other than all this being absurd, beneath a dark sky, and the wind that blows all through the night.

In the third part of the film we have the day after, with this complicated human nature brought to the stark light of what other people think. Bresson shows us judgment and cynicism, and even the old woman's advice about death is waved off; too musty for a young girl, more advice.

So how poignant to see this shift in Bresson? He gives us by the end a more eloquent Jeanne D'arc, now the dogmatist interrogators become your small-minded neighbors and Joan is neither pure nor certain in any way about the truth of what she experienced. No ceremonial death. And how deep it cuts, that she may have wanted to ask her mother for advice, unburden the confusion, but has to go through it alone.

So after a series of Bresson viewings, I will come to rest here. Antonioni would take home the Palm that year but Bresson had conquered his obstacles and arrived fully. The title of Tarkovsky's book best describes what he does here, and you can see the Tati influence as a new tool that he didn't have back in Pickpocket. He sculpts an external time, but now in such a way that the pure is found where it grows roots and rustles, among life.

It would be Tarkovsky's turn now to shoulder this legacy, and Dreyer's, asking himself, what kind of time? We dream and yearn with an asymmetric logic and mingle with our reflection. It would be one of the great leaps in the cinema but for that we'd have to go forward.

Cathartic and powerful representation of the inevitable moral dilemmas and frustrations of life.

[Sergeant_Tibbs · 8/10 · 30 July 2013]

Until now Robert Bresson has been one of those classic directors who have failed to connect with me. With Au Hasard Balthazar and Pickpocket, I've found his style over-simplified, bland and plodding. While Balthazar didn't work for me at all, Pickpocket had moments where it showed potential but then it was quickly squandered and taken in a different direction. Here with Mouchette, his style is finally working. It's a film utterly drenched in sorrow and pain. Through the protagonists' squirming and rebelling from her struggles, her actions are a catharsis from the frustrations of life and when she's punished for them, it digs deep. Although the storytelling techniques are similar to the films I didn't care much for, what elevates Mouchette is the passionate performances and the crisp photography. While I do regret that it's so brief, Mouchette is a brilliant portrayal of a truly tragic figure that faces the hardships and inevitable moral dilemmas of life. I'm very glad Bresson has warmed up to me as he's got many films I'm really looking forward to, such as A Man Escaped and Lancelot du Lac.

8/10

Another silent sufferer

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 1 March 2007]

Mouchette is another one of Bresson's "silent sufferers," like Balthazar in "Au hasard Balthazar", who takes all the punishment and abuse of the world from the very sinners she suffers to defend. Removing himself a bit from the Christian imagery, Bresson takes a very disturbing and depressing approach to something like the coming-of-age movie, where a confused and helpless teenager is thrust suddenly into adulthood.

This movie isn't nearly as brooding as "Au hasard Balthazar," but in a way it can be more disturbing for it. Unlike in Balthazar, Mouchette is given almost a moment of joy in the scene with the bumper cars, after which she attempts to approach the boy she flirted with during the run. However, she is quickly pulled away from any "temptation" by her father, and quickly is thrust back into the land of quiet despair.

It's no wonder her confusion and pain, especially at the end. After Mouchette is raped and her mother dies, she wanders the land in search of some certainty and instead is called several derogative names by the townspeople... all of her attempts to react back at them are rebuked, and she's left with absolutely nothing.

What Bresson is absolutely spectacular at doing is showing versions of death that are more transcendent than sad. When we mourn Bresson's heroes, it is more with a happy knowledge that they have lived past this world of suffering. Bresson's Catholic values saturate much of his film-making, especially in "Mouchette" and "Au hasard Balthazar", but his movies are just as powerful as character studies. "Mouchette" is a fine piece of film-making that endears the viewer to a sense of quiet suffering not often scene in any medium.

--PolarisDiB

Tragic tale of an unappreciated adolescent girl. A Bresson Masterpiece.

[Amyth47 · 9/10 · 7 October 2018]

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.

Youth lost too soon

[lokko53 · 9/10 · 25 June 2015]

After Au hasard Balthazar, Bresson takes on the life a young girl in the country side. She grows up too fast with a string of events in her life and struggles internally to make sense of it all. For some, the number of events she encounters seem to lack the subtlety of his previous efforts, but it is still a genius of minimalist film making.

*********SPOILERS******

The film begins by showing us a boy setting up traps to catch birds and we see a bird caught in one of the traps as it tries to set itself free. Is Bresson telling us something about the main character, is she a bird trapped unable to taste freedom?

Mouchette is a young girl, her mother is dying on the bed, her father and brother deal in illegal distribution of alcoholic beverages and there is a baby brother that needs to be cared for. Mouchette ends up being the caretaker of her mother and baby brother when she is home. Before she dies, the mother tells Mouchette to avoid lazy and drunk men.

At school, Mouchette shows up unkempt and is socially outcast without friends. She is distracted during school and is ridiculed by the teacher. Mouchette seems to be preoccupied with her home conditions that prevent her from learning and instead of compassion is further humiliated by her teacher. After school Mouchette throws dirt at the other school girls. We don't see the faces of the school girls until the final throw. It is an awkward scene where we wonder about Mouchette's moral character. She remains an ambivalent character, but her conditions make us feel a connection to her. She has been unable to emotionally connect with anyone.

Her father slaps her at the only time she seemed to be happy: flirting in the carnival bumper cars. Her father simply takes his drinks without an inkling of emotion (typical of Bresson). After school, she loses her way (or takes shelter) in the woods during a storm. She witnesses the arguments between two men and we wonder whether one of them was killed. The one that befriends her, tries to convince her to be his alibi. He ends up raping Mouchette although the scene makes it seem like she embraces the violent act as a final act of desperation when she seems to embrace the man.

The next day her mother dies and as she walks to get milk for the family she encounters three women who provide part compassion and part humiliation to Mouchette. The first woman gives her coffee and bread, but ends up calling her a slut. The second woman is obsessed with death and gives Mouchette a dress and cover for her mother. The third woman is the wife of the man thought to be dead. She tries to find out what happened to Mouchette, but the girl responds that the other man is her lover. Mouchette ends up tearing her new dress by a lake or river and starts rolling down the hill with the dress several times. The last time she rolls down the hill she falls into the water and the movie ends.

We do not know whether she lived or died, but the scene leaves the viewer rather uneasy. Part of the divisiveness of viewers on the film is that it is such a bleak story with no redeeming features. It is precisely for those reasons that it is a powerful film whether one loves or hates it. Mouchette is a simple film, but disquieting and disruptive to all things we hold dear.

Bresson creates timeless tragedy with a very small budget

[rowmorg · 7/10 · 8 February 2010]

It's hard to believe that Robert Bresson could muster a strong cast and create a powerful drama with a few dollars, when James Cameron could not do it with $200 million. Bresson simply uses the powerful imagery of a gutsy writer, Georges Bernanos, and makes his film in a rural context of unchanging basic values and prejudices.

I have no idea what happened to his lead, Nadine Nortier, but she seems never to have appeared in another film --- that has to be most unusual for an actress showing such talent. Her ravisher, Jean-Claude Guilbert, also seems never to have acted again. So here we have two excellent performances from amateurs who never acted again (as far as we can tell), working for a brainy French film-maker who made 16 feature-films in his 98 year-long life.

The directorial method consists of as little dialogue as possible, and plenty of symbolic actions, often balancing out in different scenes. Bresson is working in the Euro-world of other heavies such as Ingmar Bergman, and money has nothing to do with it. It's a world of ideas and movements.

In Mouchette, a pubescent girl in a disadvantaged situation is misused by a drunken fellow villager. Her very difficult and complicated night trying both to live up to her idea of womanhood and to fend off her rapist creates great conflict within her that after a couple of days trying to cope she deals with by self-destruction.

An unhappy ending usually spells death for all but very particular films, and this one is cited by Criterion as a world classic, but can only muster 15 comments on IMDb. So we see that few are interested in the work of big minds.

The humiliation of the innocents

[lreynaert · 10/10 · 23 April 2016]

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.

my least favorite bresson film so far

[gliptitude · 6/10 · 18 March 2008]

mouchette may have been ruined for me by the jean luc godard "cut" trailer that i watched on the DVD before watching the film. this trailer demonstrates and exaggerates the pornographic aspects of the film. the film is much less sensational than the trailer suggests, but there is that aspect of it. for example, it was not necessary to film schoolgirls swinging upside down on a playground, flashing their panties. it's not outrageous when you see it in context, in the film - rather it is as un-pornographic as that subject could be. but after seeing the godard trailer it is hard not to see the whole film through his eyes, and hear as if from a fellow viewer, perverted snickering during each such scene.

i disagree with the IMDb commentator who claims the "one happy scene" of the movie to be boring and lifeless. the bumper car scene is brilliant. the entire time (it is a drawn out scene) i was thinking, "why have i never seen a bumper car scene?" and "what an interesting social dynamic bumper cars are." aside from entertaining, it alone also shows that mouchette is a regular girl, and not always a victim.

i prefer A MAN ESCAPED and PICKPOCKET. these are the only 3 bresson films i've seen.

Great

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 8/10 · 1 September 2010]

The reason the film does succeed, and rises to greatness, rests primarily on the shoulders of the lead actress, Nadine Nortier, who, despite little dialogue, conveys great depths within her character, despite being a non-professional actress at the time. On the other hand, Jean-Claude Guilbert (a professional actor who also appeared in Au Hasard Balthazar, as another drunkard, Arnold) is also very good. The rest of the cast is solid. Yet, critical missteps abound, especially when some claim Mouchette is filled with anger. Yes, there may be acts of seeming anger (tossing dirt at her female rivals), bur clearly the character of Mouchette is a walking mass of desensitization. This would explain why she reacts the way she does to sex with Arsene, rather than seeing it as her 'striking back' at the world. The cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet is not spectacular, but then it need not be. It does, however, have the simple look and feel of a film shot decades earlier, and one need only compare this film with a film like Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, a color film made the same year, to get a sense of just how unique Bresson's vision was. The same is true for the scoring of the film, with little music that is not diegetic. Since the film rises and falls on its tale and performance, the technical aspects merely have to be solid, and they are.

The DVD, put out by The Criterion Collection, is a very good package. The transfer of the film is first rate, as the 81 minute black and white film (Bresson's last film sans color) is shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The special features are also quite good. They include an insert essay by Robert Polito that is short on critical masturbation, and quite pointed; the film's original theatrical trailer by Jean-Luc Godard which, when seen against the film, is utterly at odds with it; a documentary called Travelling, which is a segment from a TV series called Cinema, and has interviews with Bresson, Nortier and Guilbert; another documentary, called Au Hasard Bresson, about the director; and also an audio film commentary by film critic Tony Rayns which flows very well, is not too scripted, is scene specific in its comments, and conveys both passion and erudition; traits too often missing in most commentaries. His lone weak spot comes when trying to explain (rather justify) the rather weak ending. Rayns claims that death, for the girl, was preferable to life, and that Mouchette had fulfilled her life, with sex and death, in the last day of her life, with the death of the rabbit being the final straw; but there is just no evidence for this, and Rayns, himself, is dubious over Mouchette's reaction, since she is a girl of the rural life, where hunting is a normal activity. And, while that may be what Bresson intended, and what the character may have thought, a critic needs to go beyond merely aping explanations put forth by an artist, especially in matters that so clearly demonstrate an artistic failure, and one which seems to accept, in toto, that failure, merely due to the reputation of the artist as 'spiritual,' therefore beyond needing to make his art cohere.

However, despite that failure, Mouchette is a great film, one whose concision heightens its power, and one whose deftness of portrayal burrows more deeply into matters than its good, but skeletal, screenplay does. One of the best techniques Bresson uses to get more out of each brief scene is through the use of repetitions of actions in unrelated scenes, which then connect those scenes to others. For example, when Mouchette's teacher punishes her and forces her to sing a song, it is under duress. Mouchette sings that same song while trying to tend to a seizing Arsene. Mouchette is pushed by her father whenever she wants pleasure, and she then pushes Arsene before she has sex with him. There is also a scene where Mouchette is wet, working in the bar, and then gets some coins as payment. Later, in his hut, she is wet, and Arsene pays her some coins to go along with his story regarding Mathieu's presumed death. What this does is not only link divergent scenes in a strictly visual and cinematic way, but it emphasizes the elliptical and cyclical nature of the film, where recurring images and motivs abound. Yet, all of them are slightly askew, and the camera always seems to look at its lead character's life slightly askance, as if it was somehow recapitulating the clearly warped view of life Mouchette owns. In essence, the film called Mouchette recapitulates the point of view of its character Mouchette, which allows the viewer to both 'feel' a bit of the character's warp, while also being able to step back and intellectually distance oneself and 'understand' the character's warp.

Whether or not Bresson intended this doubled perspective on life, it, and many of the film's other strengths more than make up for its weak ending, and lift it to a greatness that, while it falls short of the utmost in the canon of great cinema, nonetheless makes Mouchette a film for which the term great is applied a surety. There are, certainly, worse ways to misfire, slightly or otherwise.

Robert Bresson's minimalist style French tragedy Drama focusing on the misery and cruelty of rural areas.

[SAMTHEBESTEST · 7/10 · 17 February 2021]

Mouchette (1967) : Brief Review -

Robert Bresson's minimalist style French tragedy drama focusing on the misery and cruelty of rural areas. Bresson had to make a film that will suit the status or at least experimental values set by Au Hazar Balthazar (1966) and somehow he managed to find the new sprint. Mouchette is almost like a silent film with hardly 70% runtime having no dialogues, yet the conviction and artistic values come out very well. The film is about a young girl living in the French countryside who suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man. Her constantly reluctant behaviour is caused by tragic and miserable events in daily life. As soon as she realises to stand against it, the even bigger tragedy happens and that's what the shattering climax is all about. Bresson said that its titular character "offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations." May be he was right for the time as post war scenario in many countries around the world could have been worsened to any level. This realisation of terrible facts is helmed artistically by the director. His storytelling is shaped in minimalist style cinema which is quite an intrication and sort of over the top. Bresson preferred non-professional actors but still got the kind of result he wanted. Nadine Nortier in the lead role is tremendously natural. Her presence reminds a real girl of that time and the expressions are pretty good too. Jean-Claude Guilbert is decent but I was expecting better as he was the only man with experience in the lead cast. Overall, Mouchette is tough film to understand, especially the artistic and ornamental values of offbeat filmmaking. Hence, recommended only to special class movie buffs who loves such cinema.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest

Incredibly boring and overrated.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 1 August 2013]

Currently on IMDb, "Mouchette" has an overall rating of 7.8 and some incredibly glowing reviews. It's also from the fancy-shmancy Criterion Collection--so I expected much, much more than I saw. While many loved it, I sure thought the film was very dull and could have been much better.

The film is about a young girl, Mouchette. She appears to be about 12 or perhaps 13 and her life stinks. She doesn't fit in at school and her home life is awful. Her father seems abusive and her mother is dying. To top all this off, later she gets raped. And, to wrap up all this joy, Mouchette rolls into the creeks and drowns herself. Wow...talk about an upbeat film!

I noticed that some praised the film for its use of realism--with non-actors and natural surroundings. This didn't really impress me, as the Italians had been making such films for some time--and most of them were much, much more engaging. I would strongly suggest you see "Umberto D" or "The Children Are Watching Us" to see that you can make a sad story with non-actors and STILL have a film that worth seeing and has much more point to it. Sorry. I just didn't enjoy "Mouchette" nor did I see why it is a great film. It was a bit vague and confusing at the beginning and ultimately made me feel miserable and unfulfilled.