Mouchette

The onset likens the presiding feeling to a stone inside one's chest, at the close it is tossed into the pond to make ripples. Unlovely rural France, home of the eponymous clomping wraith (Nadine Nortier), "Rat-Face" to locals. Ailing mother (Marie Cardinal), bootlegging father (Paul Hébert) and squalling baby brother, a dismal household she runs by herself. Staring out at the world with fierce dark eyes, she squats in a schoolyard ditch and fires a ball of mud at a classmate's perfume bottle. Stepping in a puddle before church gets her shoved to the sacred stoup, a coin at the fair occasions a captivating view of bumper cars. (Her smile is glimpsed as she's rear-ended by a flirtatious garçon, it duly yields to a paternal slap.) "And you, Mouchette, do you ever think about death?" The magnificat is Robert Bresson's format, contemplating the excruciation of the hard-boiled teenage peasant in a landscape of snares and cyclones. Alcohol and deception characterize the adult realm, gamekeeper (Jean Vimenet) and poacher (Jean-Claude Guilbert) scuffle over the cheerless barmaid (Marine Trichet), tumble into a stream, chuckle at the absurdity of it all. (The vein from La Règle du jeu is later clinched by a rabbit's death throes.) "Espérez! Plus d'espérance," the wrong note at music class is corrected to pacify a seizure in the forest cabin, the contact-starved heroine promises an alibi to a potential killer and is raped for her trouble. "If I die, I'll die without pain," maman moans for a bottle of gin from her freshly violated daughter, her final piece of advice is to avoid idlers and tipplers. A remarkable companion piece to Au hasard Balthazar, Bresson at his most bruisingly rapt. The aged villager (Suzanne Huguenin) is acquainted with the Reaper, her words are rejected by the youth who has plans of her own, the ugly duckling fable is curtailed with a splash. Godard's trailer provides the tersest review, "une film chrétien et sadisque." Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet. In black and white.