Synopsis
"
Mouchette is
Bresson’s second adaptation from
Bernanos and another tale of the trials of life in a small French town. The young
Mouchette must face at an early age her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s invalidism. The film lays out, succinctly and crisply, the cruelty and barrenness of her life in
Bresson’s rigorously objective style. While he had used voice-over narration to provide access to the thoughts of
Bernanos’ country priest, here the spectator can only infer
Mouchette’s thoughts through her physical reactions to her trials. This approach risks heartlessness, but in fact, few films capture so movingly the sheer fragility of being. In one justly famous sequence,
Mouchette finds a few moments of happiness at a bumper-car ride. She is simultaneously beset and in control; the shocks are salutary
." – Harvard Film Archive
