Mouchette

This article is about Robert Bresson's film. For the Internet art project, see Mouchette.org.

Mouchette
Film poster
Directed by	Robert Bresson
Screenplay by	Robert Bresson
Based on	Mouchette by Georges Bernanos
Produced by	Anatole Dauman
Starring	Nadine Nortier Jean-Claude Guilbert Marie Cardinal Paul Hebert
Cinematography	Ghislain Cloquet
Edited by	Raymond Lamy
Music by	Jean Wiener Claudio Monteverdi
Distributed by	UGC / CFDC
Release date	26 October 1967 (1967-10-26)
Running time	78 min.
Country	France
Language	French

Mouchette (pronounced [mu.ʃɛt]) is a 1967 French film directed by Robert Bresson, starring Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert. It is based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. It was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, winning the OCIC Award (International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisual).

A coming-of-age story, Mouchette is set in a rural French village and follows the daughter of a bullying alcoholic father and ailing mother. Unfolding in the director's famously sparse and minimalist style, Bresson said that its titular character "offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations."

Mouchette is among Bresson's more acclaimed films. The Criterion Collection DVD release includes a trailer for the film made by Jean-Luc Godard.

Plot

The film opens with a gamekeeper, Mathieu (Jean Vimenet), watching a poacher, Arsène (Jean-Claude Gilbert), as he sets his snares in the sunlit woods. Mouchette (Nadine Nortier), whose name means "little fly," lives in an isolated French village with her alcoholic father and bedridden mother, where she takes care of her infant brother and does all the housework.

She is first introduced at her school, in bedraggled clothes and oversize clogs, where she is laughed at by her classmates and chastised by her teacher, first for refusing to sing, and then for singing off-key. To correct this, her teacher grabs her by the head, orienting Mouchette's ear toward the piano keys, while striking the correct note several times. Later, Mouchette throws mud at several girls in her class who run away.

Later, in a contrast to the misery of her daily life, Mouchette goes to the fair and rides on the bumper cars. She and a young man bump into each other's cars as a mutual flirtation that is about to progress after the ride, but her father abruptly intervenes, slapping her in the face before she can speak to the boy.

While walking home from school one day, she gets lost in the woods and seeks shelter under a tree when a rainstorm falls. Arsène, an alcoholic epileptic, stumbles upon her and takes her to his hut. He fears he has killed a man with whom he had fought and attempts to use Mouchette as an alibi to disabuse him of the blame. After she agrees to repeat the story he gives her, Arsène rapes her. By early morning, Mouchette gets away and walks home. Returning home and finding her mother's condition worsening, she attempts to comfort her. After her mother succumbs to this sickness, Mouchette insults her father and goes on an excursion for milk. On the way, she has 2 encounters with the townspeople in which she is insulted.

Later, when confronted about the events of the previous night in the woods, she tries to offer the story agreed with Arsène. Reluctantly, she states that she was at Arsène's house through the night because they were lovers. Finally, she is invited into the house of an elderly woman, who gives her a dress to wear at the funeral and a shroud to cover her mother. The elderly woman speaks to her about worshiping the dead. On her way out, Mouchette insults her and damages her carpet. She goes to a nearby lake. Mouchette waves to a man on a tractor, is ignored, covers herself in the dress, and tries 3 times to roll downhill into the water, the last of which results in a successful suicide.

Cast

Besides his preference for non-professional actors, Bresson liked to cast actors he had never used before. The one major exception is Jean-Claude Guilbert, who had the role of Arnold in Au hasard Balthazar, and plays Arsène in this film.

Actor	Role
Nadine Nortier	Mouchette
Jean-Claude Guilbert	Arsène
Marie Cardinal	Mother
Paul Hebert	Father
Jean Vimenet	Mathieu
Marie Susini	Mathieu's wife
Suzanne Huguenin	Layer-out of the Dead
Marine Trichet	Louisa
Raymonde Chabrun	Grocer

Reception

In 1967, Mouchette won the OCIC Award (International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisual) at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Pasinetti Award at the Venice Film Festival.

The "critics consensus" at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes states: "Remarkable not only as a viewing experience, but as a showcase for Robert Bresson's tremendous skill, Mouchette underpins its grim narrative with devastating grace." In The Spectator, the critic Penelope Houston highlighted the excellence of Nadine Nortier's performance as Mouchette, writing that as a consequence "the whole film becomes luminous, transparent, bafflingly effortless", resulting in "a kind of perfection". Noting the lack of sentimentality or sadism in Bresson's portrayal of Mouchette's suffering, Houston writes that "Mouchette is not a child for anyone's pity, except, in both senses, her creator's." She concludes that "Like Au Hasard, Balthazar, Mouchette is a deeply pessimistic film which somehow leaves one in a mood close to exhilaration. It is conceived, if you like, as a religious experience in which the heroine is not a saint, and in which there is no conventional religious reference."

Mouchette is considered by many critics to be among Bresson's better films. Sight & Sound's critics’ poll placed Mouchette in its top 20 in 1972, and in the magazine's 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time Mouchette placed 107th in the directors' poll and 117th in the critics poll.

External links

• Mouchette at IMDb
• Mouchette at Rotten Tomatoes
• Mouchette at AllMovie
• Mouchette in Cine y Revolución (Spanish)
• Mouchette: Girl, Interrupted an essay by Robert Polito at the Criterion Collection