There's a scene in the movie where the father just lies down and
pretends to drive a car using his hat as a steering wheel.
I think this scene is one of the best examples of how the film works. All the little steps that drive Mouchette to kill herself are usually corresponding or a explained by some other little action.
Her father aloof and unconcerned about her, the mother and the baby idly plays with his imagination while Mouchette is suffering. She has nothing in her hands but mud while the other girls in her school have perfume. She loses a shoe while she gets lost. She finds there aren't any more diapers symbolizing her poverty. She has fun with a boy in bumper cars perhaps representing sexual awakening which is soon ground to a halt by her father. The woman at the store tries to give her a little more food [help] but the help isn't what Mouchette wants. Mouchette kills herself after she finds she has torn the dress. Perhaps I'm reading a little too far into it, but most scenes do have a corresponding object or a action around an object.
There isn't anything in her world that hasn't hand in putting her at the bottom of the lake, and there doesn't seem to be much that seems to be able to get her out of it. Her world rather strangely never really seems to have any religious aspects about it. She never met a priest, but her encounter with the two women in the store [who enforce social dogma] and the old woman [who rejects dogma] seem to be eluding the same effect a priest could have in the movie.
So I think the movie I basically trying to show us or perhaps defend Mouchettes suicide, while also arguing that a person cannot rely on individual strength alone.
Mouchette manages to have a few moments where she is able to smile and seem upbeat but she often pulled back down by the way the world around her is. For example Mouchette is initially able to take care of the baby and feed it while also caring for her mother and household. But eventually it is too much to bear. She is unable to start the stove and has to heat the bottle with her own body. She isn't able to change the baby’s diaper because she simple doesn't have any more. It is here she begins to cry profusely. She no longer seems to be able to cope with all her responsibility and death is the only means of salvation or escape.
Like her life her death isn't particularly abrupt. What I mean to say is rolling yourself off a gentle slope into a shallow pond isn't very effective. So why did she do it? Perhaps it’s a way of reflecting her life itself. The things that drive her to kill herself aren't simple and clear cut. They are complex, hazy and rather ineffectual by themselves. You could describe rolling yourself into a pond wrapped around a torn shroud the same way.
I think the movie in its own strange and unusual way aims to reflect in her death, a lot of her life.
I think this scene is one of the best examples of how the film works. All the little steps that drive Mouchette to kill herself are usually corresponding or a explained by some other little action.
Her father aloof and unconcerned about her, the mother and the baby idly plays with his imagination while Mouchette is suffering. She has nothing in her hands but mud while the other girls in her school have perfume. She loses a shoe while she gets lost. She finds there aren't any more diapers symbolizing her poverty. She has fun with a boy in bumper cars perhaps representing sexual awakening which is soon ground to a halt by her father. The woman at the store tries to give her a little more food [help] but the help isn't what Mouchette wants. Mouchette kills herself after she finds she has torn the dress. Perhaps I'm reading a little too far into it, but most scenes do have a corresponding object or a action around an object.
There isn't anything in her world that hasn't hand in putting her at the bottom of the lake, and there doesn't seem to be much that seems to be able to get her out of it. Her world rather strangely never really seems to have any religious aspects about it. She never met a priest, but her encounter with the two women in the store [who enforce social dogma] and the old woman [who rejects dogma] seem to be eluding the same effect a priest could have in the movie.
So I think the movie I basically trying to show us or perhaps defend Mouchettes suicide, while also arguing that a person cannot rely on individual strength alone.
Mouchette manages to have a few moments where she is able to smile and seem upbeat but she often pulled back down by the way the world around her is. For example Mouchette is initially able to take care of the baby and feed it while also caring for her mother and household. But eventually it is too much to bear. She is unable to start the stove and has to heat the bottle with her own body. She isn't able to change the baby’s diaper because she simple doesn't have any more. It is here she begins to cry profusely. She no longer seems to be able to cope with all her responsibility and death is the only means of salvation or escape.
Like her life her death isn't particularly abrupt. What I mean to say is rolling yourself off a gentle slope into a shallow pond isn't very effective. So why did she do it? Perhaps it’s a way of reflecting her life itself. The things that drive her to kill herself aren't simple and clear cut. They are complex, hazy and rather ineffectual by themselves. You could describe rolling yourself into a pond wrapped around a torn shroud the same way.
I think the movie in its own strange and unusual way aims to reflect in her death, a lot of her life.
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