Mouchette is a 1967 film written and directed by Robert Bresson and starring Nadine Nortier in the title role. It is somewhat of a companion movie to his Au Hasard Balthazar, which appeared a year earlier; the difference being that Balthazar was a donkey and Mouchette a little girl. In any case, both films are dedicated to the plight of the meekest and the weakest.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Mouchette's father physically and verbally abuses her.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The woman at the shop appears friendly at first, inviting Mouchette in for free croissants and coffee and sympathy over her mother's death but then rips into her and calls her a shameless slut after discovering evidence of her rape.
- Broken Bird: Mouchette especially after her rape and her mother's death. She can hardly function.
- Broken Tears: Mouchette can't stop crying while taking care of her baby brother after she's raped by Arsène.
- Crapsack World: The provincial France of the mid-60's is a very backward and cruel country.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Mouchette's mother, who seemed to be a much better parent than her father, dies.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The film is shot in black-and-white, highlighting the bleakness of the story.
- Downer Beginning: The film opens with Mouchette's mother revealing that she has terminal breast cancer, and worrying about the fate of her children.
- Downer Ending: Mouchette drowns herself in the end.
- Driven to Suicide: Mouchette, after being fed up that, with her mother's death, there isn't anyone to care about her anymore.
- Kids Are Cruel: Mouchette has no friends and is bullied by the other girls at school.
- Left Hanging: The drama with Arsène is never resolved.
- Love Triangle: Despite being married, Mathieu has feelings for Louisa, who hangs a lot around Arsène. It's over her that they have their big fight at the middle of the film.
- Meaningful Name: Mouchette means a small fly
- No Name Given: Most of the characters, including Mouchette's family, aren't given names.
- Oh, Crap!: Mouchette, when she realizes that Mathieu is still alive and well.
- Protagonist Title: Mouchette.
- Pædo Hunt: Played terrifyingly straight with Mouchette in the end, when Arsène assaults her in her cabin.
- Rape as Drama: And only Mathieu's wife seems to care about it.
- Parental Neglect: For poor Mouchette. Due to her mother's illness and her father's alcoholism, she's basically on her own all the time.
- Precocious Crush: Mouchette develops one on Arsène for seemingly no other reason than he's one of the few people to not immediately abuse her. Then he rapes her, and she's so broken that she just succumbs and even stays the night with him and claims he's her lover, even though she's clearly upset and traumatized by the assault.
- Sadist Teacher: Mouchette's teacher loathes her, and humiliates her during a singing lesson.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Pretty much nothing good happens to Mouchette during the course of the film. Basically everyone hates or abuses her, she rarely gets to enjoy life, she gets raped by her crush, her mother dies, and she decides to commit suicide.
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Spiritual Successor: To Au Hasard Balthazar. Only that time that was a donkey, now it is a human little girl. - Untranslated Title: It is Mouchette both in French and English.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Mouchette has a brief moment of fun at a fair where she plays in a bumper car and develops an attraction to a boy, but the day is quickly ruined by her father appearing to slap her and drag her away. Incidentally one of the few scenes in a Bresson movie where his trademark Dull Surprise is forcibly averted: Nadine Nortier as Mouchette is actually grinning.
