A Masterpiece!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

"An actor, even a talented actor, gives us too simple an image of a human being, and therefore a false image." – Robert Bresson"Suffering exists only to the extent that God is not omnipotent." - Raimon PannikarRobert Bresson directed "Au hazard Balthazar" and "Mouchette" in 1966, both films about characters who lead lives of incredible challenge and hardship. "Au Hazard Balthazar", which literally means "by chance Balthazar", revolves around a lowly donkey called Balthazar who suffers neglect, random cruelty and much toil as he is passed from one owner to another. Here, the donkey embodies a Christian submissiveness, whilst the various characters he encounters represent different sins (greedy owners, violent drunkards, proud fathers etc), which they perpetrate against both Balthazar and other humans, and themselves receive. The film is swathed in Christian symbolism. Bresson turns the downtrodden donkey into a saintly figure, doomed to live in a world of sin and strife before dying amongst Christ's flock (of sheep). The name "Balthazar" is itself a reference to one of the Bible's three wise men, and the donkey is himself baptised by characters called Joseph and Mary. Many read the film as a Christian tract, the donkey either penitent or devoutly accepting a kind of Christian suffering, but Bresson practised Jansenism, a heretical offshoot of Christianity which denies hard free-will and believes god's grace to be constant rather than earned. In other words, there is no goal to the donkey's suffering, he is not some seraphic Christian in mule form, or even a grim "Christ figure" who "takes humanity's sins". Rather, he simply embodies a state of victim-hood which all the characters share, as well as a kind of morbid corporeality, as he passes anonymously from youth, to middle age to death. Whether there is anything divine or transcendent about the donkey's death is left entirely up to the viewer. Bresson's "Mouchette", released the same year as "Balthazar", follows a similar plot structure. Here we observe as a little girl called Mouchette is bullied and mistreated by a cluster of characters, before rolling down a hill and seemingly drowning herself. Like "Balthazar", the film is built around a series of abuses and shifting power relationships, all of which are reinforced by shots of hunters, poachers and caged and freed birds (the name "Mouchette" itself means "little fly"). Unlike Balthazar, however, Mouchette is capable of dishing out as much violence as she receives, Bresson showing how abuse hurtled towards her is internalised and redirected back at others. Bresson seems more concerned, however, with playing games with how we perceive or misperceive Mouchette. Mouchette is an object of derision among her peers, schoolmates, family members and adults, her entire town treating her with scorn (and labelling her a whore) simply because she is poor. But Bresson reveals Mouchette to be a rather dignified, clean, well dressed, competent and talented girl, and anything "bad" she does (attacking girls with mud in an attempt to sully others as they believe her to be sullied, sleeping with men in an attempt to defiantly be the whore they think she is etc) is merely a response to the stereotyping directed toward her. Mouchette's town, in other words, builds and reinforces Mouchette's negative behaviour. And Bresson's film is filled with scenes which stress Mouchette's grace (her simultaneous readying of four cups of coffee for her family and herself, her caring for her baby sister and dying mother etc), and those which stress the pleasure Mouchette derives from lashing out against her victim-hood (the near sadistic joy she gets from ramming people with bumper cars, the joy she gets from sullying people with mud, the way she appreciates seemingly being raped and rebels against condescending acts of charity etc). The end result is not only a film which highlights the way negative behaviour is reinforced by external treatment - a muddying of Christ's Golden Rule: "others do onto you as you do onto them" – but one which condemns man for being blind to the divine. If we see the divine within everyone, in other words, we treat people differently. Like many of Bresson's films, "Mouchette" ends with its hero's death. Whether this is uplifting, emancipatory, a grim respite, or indeed even an actual death/suicide, is left entirely up to the viewer. In terms of flaws, both films are extremely sentimental and at times contrived (they rely on the cheap emotional tactics of, say, "Elephant Man" and "Schindler's List", wide-eyed sock puppets abused solely to illicit tears). Bresson has a reputation as a cold, detached film-maker, but here he comes across as a glacial Norman Rockwell, his sad eyed donkey seemingly belonging in a heart-strings tugging Walt Disney movie, specifically "Dumbo" and "Pinocchio", two teary eyed "abuse films" released by Disney a decade earlier. It would not be until "The Devil, Probably" that Bresson, possibly inspired by Godard, grafts his existential musings onto any kind of larger social context.8/10 – "Mouchette" is the better of both films, but neither holds the power it once did. Incidentally, "Au Hasard Balthazar" was extremely well received in France when it was released, directors like Godard and Louis Malle driven to tears by Bresson's braying mule. "Mouchette" was equally well received, and was a favourite of Tarkovsky, but seems to have now fallen into obscurity, supplanted in the West by the more crowd pleasing "abuse movies" of Truffaut. Worth two viewings.

It's hard to believe that Robert Bresson could muster a strong cast and create a powerful drama with a few dollars, when James Cameron could not do it with $200 million. Bresson simply uses the powerful imagery of a gutsy writer, Georges Bernanos, and makes his film in a rural context of unchanging basic values and prejudices.I have no idea what happened to his lead, Nadine Nortier, but she seems never to have appeared in another film --- that has to be most unusual for an actress showing such talent. Her ravisher, Jean-Claude Guilbert, also seems never to have acted again. So here we have two excellent performances from amateurs who never acted again (as far as we can tell), working for a brainy French film-maker who made 16 feature-films in his 98 year-long life.The directorial method consists of as little dialogue as possible, and plenty of symbolic actions, often balancing out in different scenes. Bresson is working in the Euro-world of other heavies such as Ingmar Bergman, and money has nothing to do with it. It's a world of ideas and movements.In Mouchette, a pubescent girl in a disadvantaged situation is misused by a drunken fellow villager. Her very difficult and complicated night trying both to live up to her idea of womanhood and to fend off her rapist creates great conflict within her that after a couple of days trying to cope she deals with by self-destruction.An unhappy ending usually spells death for all but very particular films, and this one is cited by Criterion as a world classic, but can only muster 15 comments on IMDb. So we see that few are interested in the work of big minds.

What an awful bad acting piece of french crap. Terrible dialogues. Is the 'nothing is really happening' due to low-budget or the camera guy's wanna-be art will???Why does she never smile ? It's a little bit sad to encourage drunken behaviour and paedophile vision. In summary :The girl is sad... But she never really show it. The other schoolgirls are happy... She doesn't like it so she throw dirt on their dresses and faces... She became an drunkard... She doesn't want to sing in group but try to impress with her high-pitch annoying voice a loner guy with who she have intercourse I think... She's still sad... Nothing is happening... She try to kill herself but didn't succeed... She tried again and after a few shot succeed... end. Au Hazard Balthazar was kinda better cause it made me thing about my dog's feelings. Anyway... At least she die at the end.

Bresson one of the true architects of modern cinema found in this story the perfect distillation of form and content coupling his pared down style with the poignant story of a young french girl trying to live through impoverished circumstances and doing her best to survive. Being one of my heroes I have always had nothing but total respect for the way he intellectualized every aspect of film-making without denuding it of emotional impact. A chemist of cinematic ingenuity there will never be a more profoundly personal look at cinema than that of Bresson. May the film-makers of today at least make the effort to rob from this man. Viva Bresson!