Robert Bresson/ France/ 1968/ 78 min
The story of Mouchette is one that defies simple explanation. It’s a pondering on the nature of unkindness, not wholly unlike the more recent The Painted Bird, which sought to similarly depict abject human misery. The nature of the misery in Mouchette is far more mundane, and yet it still manages to plumb depths of domestic cruelty and indifference to the point of abusive absurdity. It’s also certainly an eminently more watchable and comprehendible narrative than the likes of Au Hasard Balthazar or later Robert Bresson works like L’Argent.
In the film, as in the 1937 novel, fourteen year old Mouchette understands little of life other than the alcohol-drenched suffering that seems to come with it. Her father is an abusive alcoholic, who literally drinks up all of her afterschool job’s pay. At home her mother lies in a sickbed, too ill to even care for her own baby. Thus Mouchette is the default caregiver, mother, and skivvy to the entire family household. At school she fares little better, shunned by her classmates for being poor and regularly shamed by her teacher, while local boys tease and hurl abuse at her as she passes. It’s into this setting that the meat of the story takes place, with much of the film’s narrative concerning the night Mouchette becomes embroiled in the love triangle between the local barmaid Louisa, and the town’s rival poacher and gamekeeper.
Like much of Bresson’s oeuvre, it’s a strange and occasionally inscrutable film. One that relies heavily on the long looks given between the actors, and the uncomfortably long scenes that deliberately come in too early and leave too late. Mouchette manages to feel both realistic and utterly unreal at the same time, a facet helped by the combination of Bresson’s signature coaxing of awkward framing, unnatural line delivery and stories that rely on emotive themes rather than pure narrative. An aspect only accentuated by technical choices and limitations of the time, such as the falsely stage-lit torchlight, or the thick gelatine tears that frequently hang and drip from Mouchette’s cheeks.
Much of the weight of the film’s artistic success is on the shoulders of Nadine Nortier, in her solitary film role; playing well under her own age as the titular schoolgirl. It’s a performance that asks much of her, and she capably manages to capture the sense of confined anger and resentment Mouchette carries. Similarly, it’s the repeated unkindnesses visited upon her, as she is often roughly pushed, and slapped by her father. Indeed the one person to show her kindness at all is an older man on bumper cars, who careens into her, jolting her savagely over and over. And yet it’s one of few moments of rare happiness we see from her, happily accepting a new form of abuse.
Bresson claimed the film was one that defied simple explanation, and he was correct. While the pieces are simple at a glance, they fit together to create a complex whole, which is as unpredictable as it is certain. Possibly the most perfect evocation of his style, and a film that merits close attention, and much afterthought.
Available now on Blu-ray