Review of Mouchette (1967) by Michael H — 25 Sep 2008

Mouchette has one great scene, where Mouchette does bumper cars and has a "moment" if you will with this random dude. The rest of the movie is bullshit from Bresson, an otherwise remarkable director (Diary of a Country Priest in particular is exceptional).

What the hell happened? There is little to like and nothing to love in this film. All of the actors, unprofessional as per Bresson's creed, are utterly terrible, including the lead. I didn't connect, identify, or particularly care about what happened to Mouchette at all, either in the shack (I've never seen such a serious scene so poorly perfomed) or in the ending of the film, which was only necessary to inspired Bertulluci's The Dreamers with a much better version of it. There's nothing wrong with emotion in movies so long as its not sentimental, but Bresson here doesn't seem capable of pulling it off so he just strips emotion completely. Considering that this is the story of a young girl's suicide, that's entirely unacceptable.

Even more unacceptable is the fact that Bresson chose to fill his short 81 minute run time with an entirely unncessary side story with the trapper and the warden and the lengthy scenes with Mouchette and the trapper that lead nowhere slowly.

It's frustrating when rich material is used poorly. Godard's trailer he made for the film is a better film than the whole of Mouchette, a frustratingly banal and empty "art" film. Camp Rock is more a work of art than this major misstep from a talented filmmaker.