PICKPOCKET

This is the first film I've seen by the great French director, Robert Bresson.  It is greatly admired by the cognoscenti but frankly I don't know what to make of it.

It's a minimalist tale of Michel who is a budding pickpocket.  He acquires a couple of more experienced accomplices but in the end he gets caught and ends up in prison.

This is all directed in a spare style that matches the low key story.  Michel doesn't seem to get any pleasure from the money he steals, or indeed anything.  He has a friend Jacques who tries to find him gainful employment but who doesn't add much to the plot and doesn't have much of a character.

Michel has an odd relationship with a police inspector who knows Michel is a criminal but can't or won't arrest him.  There's at least one scene between them where they engage in a kind of philosophical discussion (very French, very 1950s).  Michel has some half-baked theory that there are 'supermen' who should be above the law.  Maybe he sees himself as one of these but if so it's a bad case of self-delusion. 

The other character of note is Jeanne, a woman neighbour of Michel's mother. Despite her knowing that Michel was stealing from his mother before her death, the film ends with her visiting Michel in prison, and out of nowhere (it seemed to me) they are passionately in love, the first time Michel shows any emotion at all.  

I'm making it sound like I didn't enjoy this film which is not the case.  The story is absorbing in its own weird way which has to be a tribute to Bresson's skill.