Le Diable Probablement (1977)

"My illness is seeing too clearly," avers Charles (Antoine Monnier), the student protagonist of Robert Bresson's typically understated look at isolation. Like so many central figures in Bresson's films (Pickpocket, The Diary of a Country Priest), Charles struggles with his sense of displacement. Here, he's given the opportunity to connect with his peers' causes (notably, their concern with the environment) and with Alberte (Tina Irissari) and Edwige (Laetitia Carcano), the two women who try to offer him love. The sly joke Bresson offers is that Charles is much less attractive than the two men Alberte and Edwige might love, a dashing activist and handsome book-shop owner. The film offers evidence for Charles being just mopey or genuinely conflicted. Bresson isn't being ambiguous so much as, if this is possible, sensitively diffident about his main character. Misdiagnosed as suicidal by a psychiatrist in the film's most revealing scene, Charles declares that he hates life but he also hates death -- "I find it appalling." But his final choice can hardly come as a surprise, since the film opens with his fate announced in two newspapers and the story is told in flashback. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide