Customer Reviews

A Gentle Woman [VHS]

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Though a Catholic, Bresson seems to find redemption in suicide. In fact, his film The Devil Probably was banned in France to those under 18 in fear it would incite suicide. A Gentle Woman, too, depicts suicide in a favorable light; as the only way the title character, a sensitive, artistically-inclined, non-materialistic "gentle" woman can set herself free from her materialistic, subtly-sadistic husband and world (a theme carried in several of Bresson's films.) This is a beautiful film, fully emphasizing Bresson's extremely austere style. Bresson is known to shoot a single scene 50 times to get the perfect image, even though he emphasizes the minimal in both camera work and "acting" (a term which he rejects, calling his actors "models", refering to the common cinema as "filmed theater".)

In UNE FEMME DOUCE, Bresson tells the story of a beautiful young woman's suicide without emotion or tragedy and with great awareness of the coldness and detachment that hallmark the final stages of some suicidal depressions. Many critics have approached this film warily, calling it a "minor work" or citing elements of its story as "inexplicable." But perhaps that is its strength; Bresson has made a wholly successful film about inexplicability, about the warped and supersensitive reactions and motivations of a mind drifting downward and downward. The hardest thing to understand about a self-destructive act is "why?" -- the "why?" is the most feared component of suicide. UNE FEMME DOUCE is the most direct addressing of "why?" ever put on film. Bresson delivers a fascinating answer, one that takes a couple of viewings to distill. The more you think about UNE FEMME DOUCE, the more it becomes a vital work in Bresson's thematic panoply, and certainly the foundation work for his late nihlistic flowering. This is a film to watch and ponder again and again.

This is absolutely one of the most powerful films ever created. Only Robert Bresson could keep the audience totally spellbound by the extraordinarily realistic mood the film possesses.

It is a shame that none of Bresson's works are on DVD yet, and such a neglect is almost a crime. Please! We are starving!

Many film buffs have trouble with the late Bresson films. Meaning the films he made in the later days of his career. I think there is an overriding current in Bresson's work. If you want to watch films that are full of spiritual rapture and hope, watch the black and white Bresson films. If you want to watch films that are full of nihilism and despair, watch the Bresson films in color. With that said, "A Gentle Woman" is Bresson's first film in COLOR! So beware!

The story is about a young woman who commits suicide. After her death, her husband tries to understand why, for what reason did she kill herself? What was going on in the mind of this lovely creature? We view the scenes of the past not through the husband's narrative perspective, but from Bresson's own narrative objectivity. Ultimately there is so real answer to why she killed herself but it's easy to read that life is too horrible and unbearable for a pure soul to deal with. This idea was handled more richly in the earlier Bresson film "Mouchette", where a young girl kills herself out of her despair. However, in that film Bresson suggests that God forgives little Mouchette and accepts her with love and total understanding. In "A Gentle Woman", the main character played by Dominique Sanda doesn't get the same lift off into God's kingdom, not because God is no longer forgiving, but because there is the very real possibility that God does not even exist! This is a very scary element in a Bresson film because grace is supposedly to be found everywhere. Remember the final audacious sequence from "Diary of a Country Priest".

"A Gentle Woman" sounds like some very dark, heavy waters but it's not really. It is handled in a very light, minimalist fashion and Dominique Sanda is a radiant, if opaque presence. She's good looking but can't carry spiritual fire in her eyes like the protagonists of the black and white movies. Her husband is a materialistic and emotionally greedy man who suffocates our heroine. In the end, he discovers his error and starts to become a good man to the woman he loves. But does she really love him anyway? She's too burdened by life and the world, it's too late, the despair weighs her down and it's death by suicide.

Her corpse lays peacefully in her coffin, her husband picks up her face and asks for her to open her eyes... just for a moment. Nothing. The body is laid to rest and the nails are driven into the wood, nailing her shut off from life forever. Despair, death, nothingness... The End.

Ouch! If you think that's nihilistic, this film has nothing on Bresson's subsequent "Lancelot of the Lake", "The Devil, Probably" and "L'Argent". Films that are brutal to the core as they indict the falseness of the world we live in and the society we share. There is so much hopelessness in them, it can be overwhelming to people who love Bresson's black and white films. But still there are elements, potential for salvation, especially in "L'Argent".

Now go and watch "Diary of a Country Priest", "A Man Escaped", "Pickpocket" and "Au Hazard Balthazar". Those films, as full of darkness as they are... light wins out... finally overcomes... and we reach the transcendental plane of existence, whether in this world or the next.

At the core of Bresson's work is a face -- any face -- caught in a moment of emptiness; seemingly devoid of emotion, but really exhausted from the inability to communicate. Human beings do not love, do not share, do not hate in Bresson's universe. They do not laugh with, or at, but simply NEAR. Dominique Sanda is his supreme icon of isolation -- a corpse for most of the film, and emotionally numb in the flashbacks. She is a gentle woman, too gentle, she walks through a world she isn't sure she wants to be in; as we are all doing, Bresson hints. She decides death is better than the terminal vapidity of existence, and dies as beautifully as anyone has ever died on screen. This is one of Bresson least understood films; but it is the foundation of his sudden late nihilistic thematic flowering. There is murderous frustration in this film; but it is locked behind lips that could never articulate it. UNE FEMME DOUCE is a case study of human isolation -- austere, depressing, but essential Bresson. Watch the faces; the fulcrum of this film is in what they do or do not express.

.... This is the first film by Bresson I have ever experienced, and I truly adore it. With a simple, Bergman-like structure, the film brings the most affective depiction of a woman's road to self-annihilation. The fallible narration tries to lead us in believing that the man really loves the spellbinding Dominique Sanda, but all our common senses are probably against him. He, simply put, does not know how to love, and the promised happiness seems to mutate into a mess of boredom with deals. The man, for example, wears the identical expression throughout the film no matter how emotionally-striking the events are, and in this case, I think the wooden, indifferent personality is well-intended. Even with minimal application of brain, one is able to fully experience the poignant torment of sharing a whole life with such a incorrigible ennuye. No words have to be spoken, only blank stares and sounds of footsteps, and the holocaust is complete, or shall I call it the midnight express to freedom?