A GENTLE WOMAN Movie Review

A Gentle Creature
Une Femme Douce

In 1969, France's celebrated director Robert Bresson made Une Femme Douce (A Gentle Woman), his first color film, which begins with the suicide of the title character (Dominique Sanda). Attempting to make sense of what—at least at first—does not make sense, the woman's husband looks back on their brief time together, remembering moments, gestures, pleasures, and heartaches, all leading to a single, mysterious instant at which her life became unbearable. Using Dostoevsky's A Gentle Creature as his source material, Bresson has fashioned a kaleidoscopic, minimalist Scenes from a Marriage that never attempts to justify or blame; it possesses, as does all of his work, a spiritual intensity that depends solely on the purity of his images, and demands the absolute attention of the viewer. (This was Dominique Sanda's film debut; she quickly moved on to Bertolucci's The Conformist and De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, eventually appearing in a few Hollywood productions.)

NEXT STOP… Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket, L'Argent

1969 89m/C FR Dominique Sanda, Guy Frangin,Jane Lobre; D: Robert Bresson; W: Robert Bresson; C: Ghislan Cloquet; M: Jean Wiener. VHS NYF, FCT