Mouchette (The Criterion Collection)
by Robert Bresson, Theodor Kotulla
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jean Vimenet, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Marie Cardinal, Nadine Nortier, Paul HebertDirector: Robert Bresson, Theodor Kotulla
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 81 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-01-16
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Mouchette (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Fragments of a life (without story or plot)
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not sure that what is most unique and remarkable about Bresson is his "spiritual style," as it is often described. One might say that by showing life in all its harshness his work opens the viewer to a vision of its "fallen state" and to the way in which a kind of grace is exhibited in the stubborn refusal of his central characters to cave in to the ways of the world even in the face of harsh adversity. (Even here, Mouchette's final seemingly tragic act is shown to be in many ways a joyous one, the work of a child at play, whose counterpart in the film is the exuberant bumper car ride, where she laughs and flirts even as she is jolted and tossled about by the shock of being continuously smashed by other cars). Still, what seems most distinctive about his films is not so much the subject matter as the deliberate lack of pretense in its style, which amounts almost to a kind of refusal to let himself as filmmaker or storytelling conventions intrude on the blunt portrayal of life.
While you can certainly reconstruct the events portrayed in this film in terms of a standard plot structure, Bresson seems unwilling to plot out the story of Mouchette; in an interview contained on this dvd he says to a reporter that if he could sum up what happens to Mouchette it would be absurd to make a movie of it. He aims only to give the essentials, showing no more than what is absolutely necessary, with the implication that as viewers we feel as though the world we are shown piecemeal is much bigger and more complete than what we are permitted to see. It is not so much "Mouchette's story" that we are allowed to see as "Mouchette's world": a small world, with a few recognizable places, and recognizable routines, a few places she is permitted to go by a domineering father, and by a mother and brother whose needs place great but uncoerced demands upon her, and a few places she goes on her own, in acts of deliberate defiance, and at the same time acts of seeking someone who will not judge her or use her or place demands upon her. Because it feels like the world we enter with Bresson's films is not merely a story that is being told (even when, as in this case, it happens to be adapted from a story that had been written down by Georges Bernanos), it is something that endures, something that remains with the viewer (at least this one) long after the final image has faded.
In all of his films, but this one feels unique and special in this respect, Bresson achieves something more than merely fiction. This is not an "enjoyable" filmgoing experience, and his aim is neither to uplift or to provide a message or entertain, but simply to show. This film is entertaining and surprising in its own way, but in the sense that it is an endless source of surprise and wonder when Bresson refuses to employ cliches of any sort and yet manages to make the events he portrays directly intelligible, without any hint of manipulation of audience emotions or expectations. Not to be missed by anyone who is interested in the potentials of film, or in the artistic recreation of life in both its everyday and its tragic dimensions.
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