A misfit teenage girl gets lost in the woods and finds herself in a strange relationship with a poacher in 1967's Mouchette. Director Robert Bresson's famous trademarks are on display, including non-professional actors and minimalism. His brilliant compositions and editing do a lot of work and the film comes off as an honest look at the strange permutations of chemistry between people.
Nadine Nortier plays Mouchette, a sullen girl who refuses to sing at choir practice and after school routinely sits in a ditch, throwing mud balls at the other girls.
The other girls are evidently so used to it, they barely take notice. Even when Mouchette manages to strike a girl's perfume bottle, the girls respond just by quietly walking away.
Mouchette lives with an abusive father, a bedridden mother, and an infant brother. She's often obliged to prepare milk for the child and feed it. Mouchette providing milk is a recurrent aspect of the plot that points to an irrepressible maternal quality in the otherwise fractious girl.
Meanwhile, a gamekeeper and a poacher find their long-standing feud has gotten to a new level as they've both fallen for an androgynous new barmaid.
One day, after school, Mouchette gets lost in the woods after losing her shoe and the poacher comes across her. He's in a state of apparent confusion but immediately tries to help her, not only out of natural concern but also because he suddenly needs an alibi.
That's all set-up. The heart of the film is the scene in the poacher's home. It's a fascinating scene in which the relationship between the poacher and Mouchette rapidly but very credibly changes from moment to moment. Each is in a state of particular confusion, each has natural qualities that suddenly and unexpectedly come to the fore (and I'm not talking only about sex).
After this scene is an interesting story about the aftermath but nothing else that reaches the height of that one moment. It doesn't need to, though
Mouchette is available on The Criterion Channel.
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