Mouchette

Saw Mouchette, a French film named after the protagonist girl who lives with her mother, father, and a baby. Her mother is sick with some kind of consumptive disorder, her father is a drunk and is shown often pushing Mouchette around, and the baby is, well, a baby. Always crying and needing feeding and then needing changing, once the milk is passed through. Mouchette takes care of her whole family in addition to going to school where the teacher is cruel to her and where her schoolmates snicker behind their hands at her giant shoes and patched dress.

This is art-house poverty-porn. The point of the film is to move us to pity the poor stalwart girl but the film has enough nuance that this is not always easy. In one scene she hurls clods of dirt at the snickering girls and when an old woman gives Moushette one of her old dresses, Mouchette sullenly growls at her that she's an old bitch. It takes some empathy and imagination to realize that Mouchette has been so humiliated by this point that she's furious at the pity and charity. Of course, we need not imagine such things. If we were feeling less indulgent, perhaps we could imagine that Mouchette is showing her true colors as a little brat, that she has broken under a life of toil and has become bad.

The plot involves Mouchette being involved in a poacher's alibi and then the whole of the town turns against her when Mouchette stands by the poacher, who has been the only person who has shown her any kindness (albeit in the form of bribes.) The film is pretty sad, not showing much promise for Mouchette's future, to say nothing of her present circumstances. I didn't find the film very depressing, but it isn't a happy film. I think this is old fashioned misery porn, meant to make us into better people but not very fun.