Like Au Hasard, Balthazar, Robert Bresson's Mouchette is another enigmatic rural parables in which saintliness is located in a most unexpected source.
Although her mother (Cardinal) is terminally ill, the friendless Mouchette (Nortier) is shunned by her drunken father and brother and picked on by spiteful teachers and villagers. When she displays kindness to an epileptic poacher, he responds by raping her...
Mouchette unfolds with little recourse to dialogue as Bresson concentrates on objects, hands, glances and sounds to tell his poignant story. A work steeped in a profound sense of unfathomability, it's a perfect introduction to Bresson's utterly distinctive cinematic universe.
