Les Mistons
Brigitte et Brigitte
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Les Mistons (The Brats)
Directed by François Truffaut.
With Bernadette Lafont, Gérard Blain.
France, 1957, 35mm, black & white, 23 min.
French with English subtitles.
During their summer holidays in the French town of Nîmes, a group of mischievous schoolboys has fun at the expense of two lovers, Gérard and Bernadette—a harmless tomfoolery that ends in tragedy.
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Brigitte et Brigitte
Directed by Luc Moullet.
With Françoise Vatel, Colette Descombes, Claude Melki.
France, 1966, 35mm, color, 75 min.
French with English subtitles.
Director Jean-Marie Straub has called Luc Moullet “undoubtedly the only heir to both Buñuel and Tati.” A complete film athlete, Moullet has worn several hats with ease: those of critic (for Cahiers du cinéma since 1956), essayist, actor, producer (notably for Marguerite Duras’s 1972 Nathalie Granger), and director of more than two dozen films. After presenting a twenty-minute documentary about the two smallest villages in France, Moullet’s first feature shifts to Paris in the 1960s, where two girls from the two villages, each named Brigitte, share an apartment and study at the Sorbonne—not, however, without encountering difficulties. Rarely shown in this country, Brigitte et Brigitte has been compared in spirit to the work of the French Situationists and includes cameos by directors Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Sam Fuller.
