Jacques Tati may have stretched the limits of comedy, but the silly putty he was reshaping already lent itself to visual storytelling (read: Playtime can wait). Besides, drama is a far trickier conjuring act. Ever since movies became talkies, it’s proved more than a mouthful for most filmmakers. So just leave it to a French painter to illustrate exquisite dramatis without cramming it all into words.
Director Robert Bresson opens up his slender narratives to observe the quiet spaces between story and symbol. Tight-lipped and tender, he draws back the curtains and peers far beyond the stage to fashion succinct dramatic form using nothing more than a few non-actors and some intuition. Just as Tati immersed his alter-ego, Monsieur Hulot, in combustible situations to tickle your funny bone, Bresson immerses his protagonists in a kind of soft brutality to pluck at your heartstrings with a paintbrush.
Mouchette tugs you along the path of adolescence, following its titular character from first to last obstacle on a crash course through misery. The meat of this coming-of-age story, its moments of vulnerability, unfold in a beautiful poesis of close-ups and tracking shots. Such a deliberate approach imbues the film with its plodding pace, orienting all perspectives around the alienation of a little troubled girl (whose name means “little fly”) as she navigates some colossal metaphors like breast-feeding, bumper cars, choir practice, rabbit-hunting, etc.
Trudging onward in a pair of hand-me-down clogs, Mouchette is deflowered, one step at a time, by the cruelty of others until her innocence is beyond plundered. She becomes destined to a life of misanthropy, and it shows. Mouchette slings mud at the popular girls for making fun of the way she sings, puncturing their perfumed sense of superiority with each clump. Alas, she’s left in the dust when they retreat on the backseat of their boyfriends’ mopeds.
Bresson bookends the film with similar means of escape, sandwiching his heroine’s quiet tumult between twin notions of death and rebirth. In the middle, he crafts an exquisite portrait of a young girl for whom there is no shelter from the storm. Tempestuous cyclones churn forth a parallel of Mouchette’s stormy social climate, externalizing her inert torment via overt symbolism. Lost on the way home from school, she’s trapped by the rainstorm. Night falls as the sky keeps pouring and things just couldn’t get any worse for Mouchette. Yet there remains a glimmer of hope amidst the heavens’ deluge.
Springing from the depths of the forest, the local poacher/lothario, Arsene, arrives just in time to save her from the wicked weather, but this is no knight in shining armor. He sees tender prey, as well as an alibi for his moonlit misdeeds. Escorting the teenage damsel to a nearby shelter, Arsene baits the same hook that snagged the game warden’s girlfriend. He umbrellas the girl with his rugged charm.
It’s no surprise when Mouchette begins warming up to his presence by the fireside. Arsene retrieves her clog from the mire and offers a few swigs of brandy-wine, but, most importantly, he talks with her. Assuming he’s accidentally murdered Mathieu (the game warden), he uncorks a whole lifetime of guilt in one seizing fit of despair. A quick dissolve on his rough exterior quickly reveals the inner damsel in distress. Mouchette can see that Arsene seeks shelter from another storm.
Following his lead on a wild goose chase, she tries to help him cover his tracks and pledges to uphold his flimsy alibi. Once he collapses in anguish, she tends to him as if he were her bedridden mother. Roles reversed, their energies magnetize into a moment of shared hurt. What follows is hard to define.
Bresson articulates the complexities of rape with an eye for all the situational subtleties of sexual transgression. Framing everything within one discreet fireplace shot, he captures the ferocious violation of a little girl, as well as an eerie sense of release. Yet, by no means is this rape scene lined with silver. It’s lit with emotion. Not the kind written on actors’ faces, but the kind that lingers onscreen, hanging in the air to whisper enigma.
With a soft focus on the flames in the background, Bresson shapes the scene’s mixed feelings into a palpable symbol of friction. Withholding any judgment on what is unfolding, the film jumps to a familiar image: the little girl huddled in the forest like tender prey.
Arsene follows her scent, voicing her name like a duck call, but to no avail. Camouflaged amongst the foliage, Mouchette deceives her savior/captor and steals away home, only to be met with hostile reproach. Unfortunately, the child’s family takes little notice of her absence, and even less notice of a young psyche baptized by rape.
Clairvoyant but feeble, Mouchette’s mother cannot parent beyond the edge of her deathbed. She tries stabilizing her daughter’s turbulent conscience with cautionary tales about beguiling day-laborers and pre-marital sex. But, soon thereafter, she perishes and her little girl’s world shrinks tenfold.
Mouchette is devastated, but still ticklish to further tragedy. More scornful than mournful, her father ignores his broken daughter while the townspeople and “caring” neighbors shower her with confections, summer dresses, and brutal condemnations. Everything shatters to bits when the game warden appears before her, alive and well. Having followed Arsene’s trail like a wounded bloodhound, Mathieu can smell his nemesis’ charms all over Mouchette. He inquires and she promptly sticks up for Arsene, confirming his whereabouts with a striking proclamation. Mouchette claims her rapist as her lover.
Vindicated, yet still vulnerable, she keeps trudging onward, seeking shelter from the storm. When Mouchette ultimately finds it in the reflections of a lake, she’s reborn.