Best movie of this year hands down!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"An actor, even a talented actor, gives us too simple an image of a human being, and therefore a false image." – Robert Bresson"Suffering exists only to the extent that God is not omnipotent." - Raimon PannikarRobert Bresson directed "Au hazard Balthazar" and "Mouchette" in 1966, both films about characters who lead lives of incredible challenge and hardship. "Au Hazard Balthazar", which literally means "by chance Balthazar", revolves around a lowly donkey called Balthazar who suffers neglect, random cruelty and much toil as he is passed from one owner to another. Here, the donkey embodies a Christian submissiveness, whilst the various characters he encounters represent different sins (greedy owners, violent drunkards, proud fathers etc), which they perpetrate against both Balthazar and other humans, and themselves receive. The film is swathed in Christian symbolism. Bresson turns the downtrodden donkey into a saintly figure, doomed to live in a world of sin and strife before dying amongst Christ's flock (of sheep). The name "Balthazar" is itself a reference to one of the Bible's three wise men, and the donkey is himself baptised by characters called Joseph and Mary. Many read the film as a Christian tract, the donkey either penitent or devoutly accepting a kind of Christian suffering, but Bresson practised Jansenism, a heretical offshoot of Christianity which denies hard free-will and believes god's grace to be constant rather than earned. In other words, there is no goal to the donkey's suffering, he is not some seraphic Christian in mule form, or even a grim "Christ figure" who "takes humanity's sins". Rather, he simply embodies a state of victim-hood which all the characters share, as well as a kind of morbid corporeality, as he passes anonymously from youth, to middle age to death. Whether there is anything divine or transcendent about the donkey's death is left entirely up to the viewer. Bresson's "Mouchette", released the same year as "Balthazar", follows a similar plot structure. Here we observe as a little girl called Mouchette is bullied and mistreated by a cluster of characters, before rolling down a hill and seemingly drowning herself. Like "Balthazar", the film is built around a series of abuses and shifting power relationships, all of which are reinforced by shots of hunters, poachers and caged and freed birds (the name "Mouchette" itself means "little fly"). Unlike Balthazar, however, Mouchette is capable of dishing out as much violence as she receives, Bresson showing how abuse hurtled towards her is internalised and redirected back at others. Bresson seems more concerned, however, with playing games with how we perceive or misperceive Mouchette. Mouchette is an object of derision among her peers, schoolmates, family members and adults, her entire town treating her with scorn (and labelling her a whore) simply because she is poor. But Bresson reveals Mouchette to be a rather dignified, clean, well dressed, competent and talented girl, and anything "bad" she does (attacking girls with mud in an attempt to sully others as they believe her to be sullied, sleeping with men in an attempt to defiantly be the whore they think she is etc) is merely a response to the stereotyping directed toward her. Mouchette's town, in other words, builds and reinforces Mouchette's negative behaviour. And Bresson's film is filled with scenes which stress Mouchette's grace (her simultaneous readying of four cups of coffee for her family and herself, her caring for her baby sister and dying mother etc), and those which stress the pleasure Mouchette derives from lashing out against her victim-hood (the near sadistic joy she gets from ramming people with bumper cars, the joy she gets from sullying people with mud, the way she appreciates seemingly being raped and rebels against condescending acts of charity etc). The end result is not only a film which highlights the way negative behaviour is reinforced by external treatment - a muddying of Christ's Golden Rule: "others do onto you as you do onto them" – but one which condemns man for being blind to the divine. If we see the divine within everyone, in other words, we treat people differently. Like many of Bresson's films, "Mouchette" ends with its hero's death. Whether this is uplifting, emancipatory, a grim respite, or indeed even an actual death/suicide, is left entirely up to the viewer. In terms of flaws, both films are extremely sentimental and at times contrived (they rely on the cheap emotional tactics of, say, "Elephant Man" and "Schindler's List", wide-eyed sock puppets abused solely to illicit tears). Bresson has a reputation as a cold, detached film-maker, but here he comes across as a glacial Norman Rockwell, his sad eyed donkey seemingly belonging in a heart-strings tugging Walt Disney movie, specifically "Dumbo" and "Pinocchio", two teary eyed "abuse films" released by Disney a decade earlier. It would not be until "The Devil, Probably" that Bresson, possibly inspired by Godard, grafts his existential musings onto any kind of larger social context.8/10 – "Mouchette" is the better of both films, but neither holds the power it once did. Incidentally, "Au Hasard Balthazar" was extremely well received in France when it was released, directors like Godard and Louis Malle driven to tears by Bresson's braying mule. "Mouchette" was equally well received, and was a favourite of Tarkovsky, but seems to have now fallen into obscurity, supplanted in the West by the more crowd pleasing "abuse movies" of Truffaut. Worth two viewings.

Mouchette is another one of Bresson's "silent sufferers," like Balthazar in "Au hasard Balthazar", who takes all the punishment and abuse of the world from the very sinners she suffers to defend. Removing himself a bit from the Christian imagery, Bresson takes a very disturbing and depressing approach to something like the coming-of-age movie, where a confused and helpless teenager is thrust suddenly into adulthood.This movie isn't nearly as brooding as "Au hasard Balthazar," but in a way it can be more disturbing for it. Unlike in Balthazar, Mouchette is given almost a moment of joy in the scene with the bumper cars, after which she attempts to approach the boy she flirted with during the run. However, she is quickly pulled away from any "temptation" by her father, and quickly is thrust back into the land of quiet despair.It's no wonder her confusion and pain, especially at the end. After Mouchette is raped and her mother dies, she wanders the land in search of some certainty and instead is called several derogative names by the townspeople... all of her attempts to react back at them are rebuked, and she's left with absolutely nothing.What Bresson is absolutely spectacular at doing is showing versions of death that are more transcendent than sad. When we mourn Bresson's heroes, it is more with a happy knowledge that they have lived past this world of suffering. Bresson's Catholic values saturate much of his film-making, especially in "Mouchette" and "Au hasard Balthazar", but his movies are just as powerful as character studies. "Mouchette" is a fine piece of film-making that endears the viewer to a sense of quiet suffering not often scene in any medium.--PolarisDiB

Just like I remembered. The face of Nadine Nortier has not changed. The unbelievable "Mouchette" in this unforgettable Robert Bresson masterpiece. I hadn't seen the film since I was a teen ager. I saw it again last night and as if by magic it felt more contemporary today than it did then and then, let me tell you, it felt pretty real in its own rigorous lyrical style. What a shockingly wonderful effect a film like this could have on teen agers today. To stay with a character who takes us with nothing more than her naked truth through a landscape of absolute desolation. Her innocence intact, in spite of the outrage. Her ultimate act as breathtaking as anything we have ever seen on the screen, before or since. I tried to show the film to a group of twentysomethings, all of them walked away within the first fifteen minutes. All except one, a boy of 21, he had escaped Bosnia with his brother a few short years ago. As the film ended I looked at him. He was silent. He spoke without looking at me "can I see it again?" That's at the center of the experience that provides this film. "Mouchette" is meant for everyone, but it'll touch only some.

Stories of childhood have often been tempered with the melancholic yearning of lost innocence (as in Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants) or the profound weight of human misery (as in Robert Bresson's Mouchette). -An opinion in a filme web - Director Robert Bresson disliked many things like, greed, shallowness, insincerity His filmes and his characters are surrounded by indifference,INJUSTICE and cruelty.and Mouchette the intransigent anti heroine of this remarkable filme knows about that.In one scene Mouchette said something,(to the man he later assaulted her), that really strikes me: `You can trust me ... I detest them' Every great film has its unforgetable moments in this one is Mouchette's night in the woods,and later over the edge and into the water… Mouchette went through a lot of bad things,the adults in this filme are just awful,one woman tells to her `You are bad.... You have evil in your eyes.' Bresson said: `Mouchette offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations.' –That's it… the Master has spoken.