Toi, Rosetta. Moi, Mouchette

The connections between Rosetta (Dardenne 1999) and Mouchette (Bresson 1967) were intriguing in the presentation of similar themes and scenarios. Both girls have difficulty with social interactions. Both interact with drunks and belligerents and form emotional attachments to these people. Both are placed in the woods with different levels of agency. Their relationship with nature and society plays with their internal struggles.

Mouchette and Rosetta have defining scenes interacting with the opposite sex. These scenes and the connections that come out of them can be seen to define the trajectory of the film. Riquet is kind to Rosetta and feeds her and cares for her. Arsene does not do as much for Mouchette. In their intimate encounter he offers her a drink and later rapes.

Graham hinges on the immediacy of our involvement, “Rosetta is charged with a visceral energy that makes the act of viewing less a visual and emotional experience than a forceful physical sensation” (1). When the camera is following Rosetta through the woods, it stays close to her face. On occasion the camera stays stationary watching her before it follows her path across the highway and behind the gate. My stomach did flips similar to the sensations felt riding in a car going up and down hill.

The spectator experiences a physical connection to Rosetta. When she speaks to herself in a relatively calm scene, Morgan notes that she “sees herself as divided, as having to separate into two parts of a missing whole in order to giver herself the comfort she has not received and is not yet able to receive from another” (530). The spectator could be interpreted to be the “Tu” or other, she is addressing. In the audience’s divided identification with Rosetta, we are also lacking in wholeness. She is separate from us. We cannot come to her aid and seemingly should struggle to connect with an image projected on the screen.

Additionally, the Dardenne brothers are commenting on both the experience of Rosetta, her isolation and inability to connect with others, as well as the audience’s own use of film to exist in a dark isolated space. Rosetta is always exposed even in her ritual changing of shoes.

The elements of nature seem to ravage her body. When her mother pushes her into the muddy water and she is left alone calling for help, the spectator is as disconnected from her struggle as she is without aide. We cannot help her. This scene is closely tied to the experience of Mouchette who likewise falls into the water. Both young women seek suicide as their last resort; Mouchette succeeds.

Rosetta even in her betrayal of a friend does not lose her life in the end. She has forsaken her job to commit suicide upon the return of her mother, which is like an emotional suicide for her. However, Riquet comes to her aid in the final image, doing for her what she convinced herself to do for him when he was sinking in the river. This parallels the water scene; her fall onto the blue gas can is her suicide attempt. Unlike Mouchette, the audience has hope that this time around she will live and become whole in the audience’s departure from her life.