Criterion Press Release: Mouchette (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[lark144]

Yes, I do prefer Casares in Les dames to her ingenue role in Les enfants du paradis. But then, who has eyes for the ingenue when you have the great Arletty spinning her web around Jean-Baptiste and all the other men in the story (and me as well)?
And yes, I was referring to the New Yorker DVD release of Lancelot.
You majored in film; I majored in Comparative Literature: the Middle Ages. Hence my love for all things medieval, in all its manifestations.
And this touches upon Mouchette but tangentially. Vive Bresson!

"Mouchette"--in spite of the bumper cars--has a definite Medieval feel, the rhythm of the images evoking the cadences of the Chanson Roland. Things appear unformed, fields and houses, as well as people, separated by this void, an absence of both God and community. It's primal, and yet, there's a kind of music to it that comes through the compositions, the pacing and the performances, a mysterious voice, or maybe a promise, lingering just outside of things. It's that consciousness of something other, a lyrical essence, or maybe it's the possibility of Grace, and our shared humanity, that weaves these people together, in spite of the bareness and brutality, that makes "Mouchette" such a great film. I know that's a paradox, but then, that's also Bresson.

Another thing: those primal and primeval fields in "Mouchette" resemble the fields that border the zone in Tarkovsky's "Stalker". I don't know what that means, but it's an observation.

 

[bujaki]

"Mouchette"--in spite of the bumper cars--has a definite Medieval feel, the rhythm of the images evoking the cadences of the Chanson Roland. Things appear unformed, fields and houses, as well as people, separated by this void, an absence of both God and community. It's primal, and yet, there's a kind of music to it that comes through the compositions, the pacing and the performances, a mysterious voice, or maybe a promise, lingering just outside of things. It's that consciousness of something other, a lyrical essence, or maybe it's the possibility of Grace, and our shared humanity, that weaves these people together, in spite of the bareness and brutality, that makes "Mouchette" such a great film. I know that's a paradox, but then, that's also Bresson.

Another thing: those primal and primeval fields in "Mouchette" resemble the fields that border the zone in Tarkovsky's "Stalker". I don't know what that means, but it's an observation.

You've touched upon an important point in Bresson's oeuvre: Grace.

 

[titch]

You've touched upon an important point in Bresson's oeuvre: Grace.

There were a few moments of grace in Mouchette - the boy flirting with Mouchette, the poacher retrieving her clog and providing her shelter from the storm, the baker giving her coffee and croissants and the old woman giving her a beautiful dress and shroud for her dead mother. But in every single instance, the kind gestures were rejected, or ended with violence. It was hard work trying to root for a protagonist, whose soul has been completely crushed.

 

[lark144]

There were a few moments of grace in Mouchette - the boy flirting with Mouchette, the poacher retrieving her clog and providing her shelter from the storm, the baker giving her coffee and croissants and the old woman giving her a beautiful dress and shroud for her dead mother. But in every single instance, the kind gestures were rejected, or ended with violence. It was hard work trying to root for a protagonist, whose soul has been completely crushed.

Grace, in Bresson, does not exist merely on a narrative level, but in the film grain, the light that illuminates those faces, and the life that is portrayed, no matter how seemingly bereft of joy or reason. Grace is in Mouchette, even as those horrible things happen to her. In fact, Grace seems to expand because of that suffering for there is something in the way Bresson visualizes things that transcends humanity, and yet is a part of it. I don't think Bresson wants you to totally identify with Mouchette so much as to use her as a vehicle to discover how Grace exists even in the most humble and desperate places. As George Bernanos, the author of "Mouchette" wrote, "Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love ourselves in all simplicity - as one would love any of those who themselves have suffered."