Mouchette

"Mouchette" is one of the saddest movies I've ever experienced. It's a bleak film about a young girl's futile life where in it she is left caring for her dying mother, and her newborn brother. Her father is a drunk and a criminal who bullies and beats her. She must go to school in tattered clothes, and over sized clogs for shoes. Later, she is raped, and townsfolk accuse her of being a slut, she cuts her life short by throwing herself in the river.

What does Mouchette's life add up to? This can be what is so horrible about our existence, that something like this can happen. In the beginning of the film we see pigeons get snared in traps, and we see them struggle, one bird looks to have died from a broken neck after struggling to escape the snare. Later before Mouchette's suicide, we see rabbits surrounded by hunters as they shoot at them. There is nowhere for them to run, the rabbits are shot. For me, these are horrible scenarios, seeing innocent creatures pitted against the cruel world. But despite the despair, Mouchette depicts, does it have a sense of grace?

This is the question I keep trying to answer in this film as well as life itself. "Mouchette" was directed by Robert Bresson, who's filmography I've seen little of, yet of the films I've seen, I would say he's a master. Bresson was known to cast inexperienced or unprofessional actors in his films. He remains minimal with the performances by rehearsing scenes over and over until they depict zero emotion. Their faces remain in a neutral stance, and it works. For the young actress depicting Mouchette, her face shows nothing but sadness, anger, and contempt. There is one scene where she is allowed to smile as she is given money to go on a bumper car ride and she is able to flirt with a young man. Her happy dream is taken from her by her father who strikes her before she gets a chance to talk to the boy.

Bresson is the kind of director who's not afraid to show suffering, although he's often thought of as spiritual. Bresson challenges us with "Mouchette", he doesn't find any easy answers, even I'm left to question what the point of it all is. Mouchette's suicide has been thought of as an act of grace, we don't actually see her fall into the river, but we hear the sound of a splash as she roles towards it. The final image is the ripples of water floating back and forth, and the white dress Mouchette was wearing which was supposed to be used as a shroud for her dead mother. It might seem to most that Mouchette had left this cruel plain for a more enlightened afterlife...perhaps.

To be honest I didn't quite read into any spiritual conclusion when I revisited this film, what I saw was an innocent thrown to the wolves, perhaps hoping that the next life couldn't be as bad as this one. But I'm drawn to this question, and Bresson is perhaps struggling with the answer himself. He has come to the conclusion that life can be cruel, and for someone like Mouchette who looks and acts like someone who has never known any kind of happiness, it's unfair. Why should a child like Mouchette live? What hope is there for her? There must be another plain for this child to be happy, if there isn't than what's the point? Bresson to me must've been a humanist, he had empathy for his characters, he paints a bleak world, but he's able to transcend its hopelessness. To me he gives Mouchette hope only in death, it's her release from the snare, it's the only thing we could hope for her.

"Mouchette" is sad, but I don't find it depressing, to me it's like a prayer, in fact the first scene we see Mouchette's mother in church addressing the camera. She says what sounds like a prayer, wondering what will become of her children without her. The rest of the film, we get to see what happens to Mouchette, it isn't pretty, but we are able to see those moments of grace and maybe hope. There is a beautiful image of Mouchette crying holding her baby brother in her arms feeding him. We see the tears from her face drop on her hands as she is holding the child, for me, it did seem like a religious experience, as if something divine was happening within the frame.

"Mouchette" is a film that saddens me, even enrages me, but it's a challenging film, it's philosophical, it begs the question, is this all there is? Can we hope for more?, Is there something beyond all this suffering we put upon ourselves? Robert Bresson doesn't spell it out for us, I'm not sure he had an answer himself. In the end "Mouchette" becomes a fine balance between despair and faith, a place I'm sure most of us have found ourselves in more times than not, it's a film where we hope there is more than the life given to us, and for people like Mouchette, I sincerely hope there is.