Mouchette (1967)

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1. 

   iCheckFilms

   Robert Bresson's characters are very very interesting. On the surface, they are just ordinary. But, once you let yourself get absorbed into the milieu, you may find them fascinating and haunting at the same time. One of my most favorite auteurs. 12 years 1 month ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   I think Robert Bresson just isn't for me. Case in point, I had the same problems with Mouchette as I did with Pickpocket. On the one hand, Bresson's plots are meant to be depressingly realistic - he's basically filming people as they live, and isn't particularly interested in conventional structure, resolutions, etc. On the other, I find the acting completely unrealistic - a lot of dead faces delivering cold, unemotional dialog. And though I might respect his craft, I just can't help but find the approach and the result rather boring. Mouchette does pick up in the last act, mind. This is the story of a teenage girl forever outside society, hated by her school mates, knocked about by her father, tending to a dying mother, and then things get worse when she might have witnessed a murder in the woods. Mouchette is an unapproachable character constantly pushing back against the world, trying to escape its norms, cutting through the forest rather than using roads, being mean to people who are kind to her, and in the end, her final escape is a sort of unearned poetic moment marred by a noticeable loop shot. I dunno. It doesn't really work for me. Purely from a personal sensibility, I could also do without shots of animals being trapped or shot, then suffering on screen for the gods of cinema. So Bresson is off my list of must-sees. For now, anyway. 3 years 9 months ago
3. 

   UnEnfantPerdu

   Fascinating movie. Didn't have adequate subtitles in the version I saw but the cinematic language of Bresson still got through each scene in a beautiful and at the same time awful way. 9 years 8 months ago

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