Recently, I mentioned how some films require, but then richly reward, a viewer’s patience. Like most of Robert Bresson’s work, the beautiful and haunting Mouchette is the perfect example of patience rewarded. In fact, the film’s power grows stronger well after the lights come up, as the images, themes, and characteristically “Bressonian” performances wrestle with the viewer’s subconscious. The film screened Monday at the Siskel Center, followed by a lecture and discussion. And while I didn’t agree with everything being said, just the process of rethinking the film was rewarding.
For now, seeing Mouchette is difficult, as the film is not yet available on Region 1 DVD. In the mean time, see the film Bresson made immediately before Mouchette, considered by some to be its counterpart: Au hasard Balthazar. A treatise on suffering and sacrifice, and easily an allegory on the life of Christ, Balthazar is available on Criterion DVD. (The fact that Rialto has recenlty restored Mouchette may indicate that it will also join the collection.) The film follows the sad life of a donkey names Balthazar. Yes, a live donkey is the main character. And if you don’t at least come close to crying at the end, you just may be an ass yourself.
Human, but no less a beast of burden, Mouchette is a 14-year old girl with a dire existence — she lives in squalor, cares for her infant sibling and dying mother, and attempts to escape abuse from her heavy-drinking father and complicit older brother. She seems to have no friends at school (and makes no effort to make them), and is met with indifference by the inhabitants of her small village. Her attempt to befriend the village outsider, a poacher and morbid alcoholic, robs her of the only mystery left in her young adolescent life.
The film is Bresson’s last to be shot in black & white, and contains one scene in particular that is crafted to perfection. A stranger gives a bumper car token to Mouchette, who cautiously proceeds to get knocked around, primarily by an anonymous boy. But her timidity fades. The facial photography and editing are peerless, and with each knock, Mouchette’s armor begins to crack, fear and anger are replaced by smiles and exhilaration. Innocent fun is mixed with curiosity about this boy. Bresson added the scene, not found in the source novella, and thereby magnifies the sadness that proceeds and follows, transforming it into something strangely beautiful. The imagery of Mouchette giving way to simple, childish joy, to a glimpse of happiness, and to the vulnerability of youth, becomes even more heartbreaking in its final context. The entire film resonates around this moment.
By the end of the film, Mouchette has truly seen all that life has to offer. Her mother dies, and so does hope. Mouchette rejects the seemingly kind acts of the previously apathetic villagers, first of all because their motivations are false, and secondly out of latent despair: these fleeting condolences are the most she can ever expect of anyone from now on. She comes across hunters shooting rabbits, and the camera spends an uncomfortable amount of time following the innocent little creatures just before they take their place in the food chain — a fitting metaphor for Mouchette, whose purpose seems to have come to an end. The film ends oddly, mysteriously, and perfectly.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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1 dmh // Jul 5, 2006 at 12:58 am
After watching the extra features of Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses this evening, I better understood and therefore watched again several scenes of Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, only to find that the reference to (and clips from) Mouchette near the end of the film went right over my head when I first saw the film, having not yet seen Mouchette.
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