3. Mouchette (1967)
Directed by the Lord of Cinematic Sombre - Robert Bresson, Mouchette is a very bleak film. The titular Mouchette is a poor peasant girl in rural France. Her father is an alcoholic and her mother is bedridden. Mouchette is neglected and unloved. She has to mind the baby and do all the housework. When she goes to school, the children laugh at her bedraggled appearance and the teacher humiliates her for singing off key. To brighten up her dreary life, Mouchette visits a fairground where she goes on the bumper cars. She makes friends with a young boy but her father slaps her in the face putting an end to that. One night she gets lost in the forest and is forced to seek shelter in a house where she is raped by a criminal. The next morning she finds out that her mother has died. Unable to take any more, Mouchette drowns herself. Mouchette probably represents Robert Bresson at his most austere. Mouchette is a lot like Au Hasard Balthazar in terms of its treatment of vulnerable creatures and outcasts. Mouchette does not have one single friend or family member to support her or talk to her. The terrible things she goes through - rape, belittlement, humiliation, rejection - all pile up onto her and she cannot escape her bleak existence until she kills herself. In terms of characters in films having a whole heap of problems and nastiness piled on their shoulders, Mouchette is up there with the most bleak and depressing.