There is a scene in The Dreamers, where three young and besotted cinephiles (including the especially dreamy Eva Green) watch Robert Bresson's 1967 Mouchette. Bertolucci tempts his audience with one brief, captivating shot, a young girl rolling down a rocky hill. Turns out, this is the film's tragic end.
A Tragic Life In Black and White
The black and white, relentless portrait of an adolescent girl, Mouchette is being released this week on DVD by Criterion. Relentless is no exaggeration: the girl's mother is slowly dying, her father is a cruel drunk, and because the family is terrifically poor, there is also a baby brother who never stops crying. Mouchette dresses in near rags and wears painfully ill fitting shoes.Nadine Nortier gives a fine enough performance in the title role (according to IMDB, it's her only role.) Her character, however, remains an enigma. Why, for instance, does she cower beneath a tree during a rain storm rather than seek shelter? What motivates her to protect a creepy poacher in the woods, even after he mistreats her? Mouchette does, after all, appear to have some spunk. In an early and promising scene, she throws clumps of dirt at her fellow students. Go Mouchette --her righteous anger holds a certain appeal, but unfortunately, this fighting spirit soon fades. Bresson may have been intent on creating a tragedy, but in this particular tragedy, the heroine never even tries to rise above her unfortunate circumstances.
Like the young lovers in The Dreamers, I am a big believer in a having a well-rounded film education. Without a doubt, raiding the The Criterion Collection's impressive array of DVD releases is a sure way to achieving that goal. If, however, you are looking for a French New Wave film about the despair of youth, Francois Truffaut's 1959 The 400 Blows is your ticket. And if you want to know more about Bresson, an important filmmaker (and I apologize for the seeming disrespect in this review), try instead Au hasard Balthazar.
DVD Special Features
--New, restored high-definition digital transfer--Commentary by film scholar, critic, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
--Au hasard Bresson, a half-hour documentary about the director, including behind-the-scenes scenes footage of Bresson directing Mouchette
--Travelling, a segment from the cine-magazine TV series Cinema, featuring on-set interviews with Bresson and actors Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert
--Original theatrical trailer, cut by Jean-Luc Godard
--New and improved English subtitle translation
--Booklet with a new essay by essayist Robert Polito
