Mouchette (1967)

(film 81 minutes)

Directed by: Robert Bresson
Language: French

Rating: 8/10 | Yaser Tohidi
September 13, 2021

Mouchette is a young girl from a poor family with a mom close to dying and an alcoholic father. She takes care of all the housework instead. At school she is being bullied and harassed because of her clothes and shoes and the fact that she is not as proper as she should be both in her appearance and her behaviour. In the village also she is being insulted, disrespected and even raped in one scene by an alcoholic epileptic poacher when she tries to leave his hut where she took shelter from the rainstorm. Mouchette starts to understand the determinism inherited to her by her situation and she realises that the walls surrounding her are too high. She commits suicide then.

Mouchette artistically depicts the problems that marginalised people, especially children face. The movie shows the dark life of Mouchette without any hesitation and sentimentalism on the curtain. However, as soon as the viewer perceives Mouchette as his protagonist and is keen to follow her destination, the movie surprises your hopes by reminding you that she is just a child (read human) who might, in an impulsive decision even in the middle of playing, break and fail to continue living and fighting.

Click here for wikipedia page