Mouchette

Mouchette is a teenage girl living in poverty in the French countryside, where she looks after her sick mother and a baby brother while enduring her alcoholic father's cruelty and humiliation from the people around her. Isolated and worn down, she crosses paths with a poacher named Arsène, an encounter that leaves her with a burden she has no one to share. The film follows her through a brief stretch of her life in the village, closing on an ambiguous and much discussed final image.

Robert Bresson directed and wrote the screenplay, working with producer Anatole Dauman and the production companies Argos Films and Parc Film. It was released in March 1967, running 81 minutes. It followed Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and preceded A Gentle Woman (1969) in Bresson's filmography. Nadine Nortier plays the title role, with Jean-Claude Guilbert as Arsène and Marie Cardinal, Paul Hébert, Jean Vimenet and Marie Susini in supporting parts. On TMDB the film holds a rating of 7.4 out of 10 from 286 votes, indicating a modest but appreciative audience and a durable place among the director's works.