Mouchette (pronounced [mu.ʃɛt]) is a 1967 French tragedy film directed by Robert Bresson, starring Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert.

"[1] It was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, winning the OCIC Award (International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisual).

Unfolding in the director's famously sparse and minimalist style, Bresson said that its titular character "offers evidence of misery and cruelty.

[a] Mouchette, whose name means "little fly," lives in an isolated French village with her father and bedridden, dying mother, taking care of her infant brother and doing all the housework.

Returning home, she feeds her crying hungry baby brother with a bottle of milk, then changes his diaper, as her weak bedbound mother instructs.

Later, when talking to the gamekeeper Mathieu and his wife about the events of the previous night in the woods, she tries to offer the story agreed with Arsène.

Finally, she is invited into the house of an elderly woman, who gives her a dress to wear at the funeral and a shroud to cover her mother.

The one major exception is Jean-Claude Guilbert, who had the role of Arnold in Au hasard Balthazar, and plays Arsène in this film.

[6] The "critics consensus" at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes states: "Remarkable not only as a viewing experience, but as a showcase for Robert Bresson's tremendous skill, Mouchette underpins its grim narrative with devastating grace.

"[7] In The Spectator, the critic Penelope Houston highlighted the excellence of Nadine Nortier's performance as Mouchette, writing that, as a consequence, "the whole film becomes luminous, transparent, bafflingly effortless", resulting in "a kind of perfection".

She concludes that "Like Au Hasard, Balthazar, Mouchette is a deeply pessimistic film which somehow leaves one in a mood close to exhilaration.