Une femme douce (1969)
Directed by Robert Bresson

Film Review

Une femme douce (a.k.a. A Gentle Woman) was the first colour film that Robert Bresson made and immediately we see a break from the director's previous eight films, with a dramatic intensification of the austerity and pessimism that most characterise his work.  Stylistically, the film is noticeably different from Bresson's black and white films and already there is in evidence the rigorous paring back, the striving to show only what is essential, that would obsess the director in his later years.  The transition from Mouchette (1967) to Une femme douce, made just two years later, is as stark as it is brutal, and yet the two films are linked by a common Bressonian theme - that of escape from the penury of mortal existence through death.  In the case of Mouchette, it is physical suffering that drives a girl to kill herself.  In the subsequent film, a woman's suicide is prompted by a malaise of the soul, a revulsion for all fleshly things that incarcerate and repress one's spiritual being.

In common with the next film Bresson would make (Quatre nuits d'un rêveur), Une femme douce was based on a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky and is unusual in that the director cast a celebrity in the lead role.  Dominique Sanda was a well-known model at the time but Bresson reputedly chose her because he liked the sound of her voice.  As was the case with the director's other 'models', Sanda's lack of acting experience was an asset, allowing Bresson to train her to give the kind of performance that befitted his film, one that revealed inner pain by suppressing external emotion.  After this impressive debut, Sanda went on to lead a very successful acting career, appearing most prominently in high profile art films such as Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista (1970), Vittorio de Sica's Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970) and Jacques Demy's Une chambre en ville (1982).  By contrast, her equally compelling co-star Guy Fragin is only credited with this one film.

Sanda's presence helped to make Une femme douce one of Bresson's most commercially successful films, although what makes the film so accessible is its domestic context and the insight it sheds on themes that we can all relate to - why relationships break down, what drives individuals to suicide, what life is meant to be about.  It is a film that has the 'page-turner' quality of a good murder mystery, and indeed it is constructed as such, with first person flashbacks that attempt to resolve the mystery of a young woman's death.  Of course, what Bresson ultimately delivers vastly surpasses anything in the crime fiction line - it is the bleakest of existential essays which we are free to interpret in any way we choose.

The film's tragic outcome has an almost mechanical predictability about it, like that of a Jacobean tragedy - an impression that is reinforced by the inclusion of an extended scene from Shakespeare's Hamlet (the duel scene in which the main protagonists all meet a nasty end).  As in any classical tragedy, the two main characters appear destined to destroy one another.  He is a pawnbroker who, having had to rebuild his life after one career disaster, has become insecure, untrusting and obsessively controlling.  She is a vulnerable dreamer, who needs material and emotional support but cannot bear to be confined.  He takes possession of her as though she were just another trinket placed into his hands for ready cash.  Instead of giving her love and understanding, he imprisons her in the closed world he has built for himself, guarding her jealously and thwarting any attempts she makes to escape him.  A free spirit, she naturally rebels against this confinement.  She takes a lover, more to assert her freedom than to satisfy any emotional or physical need.  Her doom is sealed when she realises she cannot kill her husband when Fate places the instrument of her release into her hands - a loaded gun.  When finally he confronts her after his belated moment of epiphany it is as if the final stone of her immurement has been put into place.  She has only one possibility of escape, and she takes it.

Une femme douce is a film that is permeated with a sense of loss and separation.  Frequently, the camera lingers on places where we expect someone to be, but all we see is a person-shaped void.  Even when the two protagonists appear in the same shot, the disconnection between them is striking.  Both have a profound need for love, and yet neither is capable of satisfying the other's needs - he is a cold materialist who, vampire-like, thrives on the misfortune of others; she a dreamer, an ethereal being that can barely support the notion she is composed of the same stuff as the rest of the animal kingdom.  And when these two ill-matched souls do finally make contact, all too briefly in a sublime moment of tenderness, it is the spark that ignites the touch paper to their shared annihilation.  This is Bresson at his cruellest and most pessimistic - not even love can bridge the gulf between flesh and spirit.

Film Synopsis

Shortly after her husband has left their Parisian apartment, a young woman commits suicide by leaping from a balcony.  As the smashed body of the dead woman lies before him, the bereaved husband recollects their shared history together in an attempt to understand what drove her to such a drastic act.  It all began when she entered his pawnbroker's shop to pawn the few possessions she had.  Taking pity on the young woman, the man offered her a more comfortable life as his wife.  The marriage begins as well as it might but within a short time a rift develops between the married couple.  Noticing how distant his wife is becoming, the pawnbroker suspects she is seeing other men.  She becomes increasingly withdrawn and soon the two find it impossible to communicate with one another.  Then, one day, the husband suddenly realises what is wrong.  The revelation comes too late...