Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson)

Will this film make me laugh? Cry? Will I have fun for a couple of hours then forget all about it by the next day? If that's the kind of questions that run through your mind when evaluating a film, then for God's sake, please read no further. Robert Bresson is clearly not what you're looking for, and his film "Mouchette" will quite likely force you to ponder questions about life and death that you probably spend most of your waking hours trying to avoid.

Yes, it's bleak. Mouchette is a prepubescent girl who lives in poverty. When she's not at school or at work at a local diner, she's at home caring for her dying mother, baby sister, and wine-smuggling drunkard of a father. Her teacher slaps her for singing out of key, and her schoolmates despise her and her cheap wooden clogs. Mouchette's few joys in the film include throwing mud at the rich girls, decimating her opponents in a game of bumper cars, and caring for an epileptic murderer. Cheery, no?

The film delights in symbolism. We open with some of Bresson's most stunning and effective cinematography, a cat-and-mouse game between Arsene, the poacher, and Mathieu, the game warden. A figure concealed by dense shrubbery sneaks upon a clearing. Hands, in closeup, set partridge traps. Another pair of eyes watch, wait. The traps snap, and the game begins. Birds struggle helplessly in the nooses, writhing in pain. Mathieu carefully approaches one of the frightened animals, seizing it in a moment of weakness. He unties the noose, releasing the bird. Arsene watches his defeat, then flees the scene. The sequence economically anticipates the film's primary motif. Mouchette is like this bird, caught between two opposing forces: her own independent, noble spirit, and a society that despises her for circumstances beyond her control. She struggles, but in vain. Will someone release her from this trap? In a way, yes, though her "liberation" has left audiences implacably divided, often along religious lines.

"Mouchette" is the second time Bresson adapted a novel by Goerge Bernanos, the first being his internationally renowned success, "Diary of a Country Preist." Bernanos's style seems perfectly suited for Bresson; he deals with the interior aspects of the characters, their thoughts, the movements of their souls. Bresson's peculiar aesthetic seems uniquely capable of rendering these themes on the screen. The flatness of his photography, the automatism of his characters, the interdependence of his images, all point toward the hidden, concealed, yet inexplicably revealed. And though the "plot" defies all attempts at conventional analysis, the film is a wholly compelling exercise in form, layered with meaning, and divisive in it's conclusions. It's also an impressive sifting of characters, themes, and motifs, each of which stand on their own, yet combined form something altogether different.

Last Word: "Mouchette" is a touching film of rebellion and independence that unites audiences in their appreciation and divides them in their conclusions.

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Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson)

#437 TSPDT

You might say that I have a love/hate relationship with the French auteur Robert Bresson. Another way to put it: I think I like his films in spite of him. Bresson, initially a painter, broke into the film industry with his 1950 feature-length narrative A Diary of a Country Priest. Over the years, he developed an ascetic approach to film that stripped all emotionality from both the performances and the images. I've noted an obvious, linear progression of his peculiar artistic style through four of his films: Pickpocket (1959), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), Mouchette (1966), and most recently, Lancelot du Lac (1974).

Lancelot, the topic of this review, concerns the aftermath of King Arthur's failed quest for the Holy Grail. Many of the knights of the round table died during the quest, all too often at each other's hands. The young queen Guinevere believes that they failed because their intentions were ignoble. They sought the grail for personal glory, she says; they desired to control God. Lancelot, however, believes their doom stemmed from the ongoing affair between himself and the queen. The jealousies, hatreds, and power struggles between the knights that occupy the remainder of the film in one way or another revolve around this forbidden love.

I was instantly drawn to the opening sequence of the film; indeed, it's quickly become perhaps my favorite in all of cinema. Lancelot du Lac begins with a sword fight between two knights; the camera, careful to exclude the knight's heads from the composition, follows their swords as they clash. Then, in a dispirited and almost casual motion, we see the sword of one of the knights decapitate his opponent. Blood streams from the loser's neck water-hose style. Several similar scenes follow, punctuated by fully-armored, faceless knights galloping through the woods on their horses. It was immediately obvious to me how indebted Monty Python and the Holy Grail was to this film.

Bresson's treatment of violence stands in complete antithesis to any of our modern expectations of a heightened violent realism (which we can trace back to Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan). The actors in Lancelot deliver their lines as if they were reading them for the first time from a script: without emotion, without timing. Bresson highlights this unconventional method with his own unique photographic sensibilities. His compositions either fully encapsulate the actor in the most simplistic and straightforward closeup, or he removes their faces from the frame entirely, finding a unique way to communicate the action of the scene: we might watch the hooves of their horses clopping along the path, or focus in on a hand gripping a lance. Don't expect any breathtaking sweeps of scenery or haunting long-takes that burn their way into our subconscious.

It's hard to say why I've liked almost all the Bresson films I've seen (Pickpocket being the exception). For me, great film thoroughly envelops me in a world that I'm compelled to follow, either through dialog, performances, cinematography, narrative - or better yet, through all four. But in each of these areas, Bresson seems to intentionally subvert my perfectly reasonable expectations. By all accounts, I should hate his films. By all accounts, I should have turned them off in the first 10 minutes. Yet they're unique, and Bresson's commitment of vision has kept me searching, searching. Maybe I'm just a sucker.
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