9. Une Femme Douce (1969)
Bresson's first film in colour, Une Femme Douce (A Gentle Creature) is not one of his best known movies, so I am here flying the flag for the film, which is a solid movie and very solemn A young woman - Elle, commits suicide by jumping out of a window in her apartment. The film, featuring her devastated husband - Luc looks back on their relationship to see how things went so dreadfully wrong. When they first met Luc was a pawnbroker and Elle was a client, impoverished and pawning her pathetic wares. Luc is entranced by her beauty and desires to marry her - to take her away from poverty. The two get married but it soon becomes clear that they are incompatible. Bresson depicts the discomfort and claustrophobia of the marriage - particularly for Elle. Luc, to be fair, makes an effort with Elle - taking her places, but he is circumspect in expressing his feelings. Elle is like a piece of jigsaw that is being manipulated to fit a space it doesn't belong to. Her suicide follows. Bresson takes his story from Dostoyevsky and removes all of the melodrama, stripping it to its barest bones and intellectualising it. It is hard to relate to either Luc - who is a controlling materialist, or Elle whose head we never get into despite her being on screen for most of the movie. Elle is very enigmatic but dissatisfied with everything, does anything at all make her tick? I think at the movie's end, we are no closer to deciphering Elle as we were in the beginning. A very strange film from Bresson, a little less intense than his usual efforts and again offering up the solution of suicide as a response to human suffering which is a pretty solemn concept.