Une femme douce is a 1969 French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson

-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...

. It is Bresson's first film in color, and adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....

's short story "A Gentle Creature

A Gentle Creature

"A Gentle Creature" , sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship between a pawnbroker and a girl that frequents his shop. The story was inspired by...

 (Кроткая)". The film was set in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 at the time.

The tragic drama is characterised by Bresson's well known ascetic style, without any dynamic sequences or professional actors' experienced and excessive expressions. Dominique Sanda

Dominique Sanda

Dominique Sanda is a French actress and former fashion model.Sanda was born as Dominique Marie-Françoise Renée Varaigne in Paris to Lucienne and Gérard Varaigne...

, starred as "a gentle woman", made her debut in the film, starting her career as an actress. Bresson chose her just as a result of her first voice call. http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/Words/CTSamuels.html

The film opens with a flowing curtain, implying a young woman's suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. Her distraught husband explores in flashbacks what led her to kill herself. The story reveals their desperate, despairing miscommunication. Their dialogue only deepened her isolation and sadness.

Although the film applies a background of 60s Paris, such as Muséum national d'histoire naturelle

Muséum national d'histoire naturelle

The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle is the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France.- History :The museum was formally founded on 10 June 1793, during the French Revolution...

 and Musée National d'Art Moderne

Musée National d'Art Moderne

The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...

, its theme is accurate to the novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

.

Bresson subsequently made another adaptation of Dostoevsky, his next film Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer) (1971) based on White Nights

White Nights (short story)

"White Nights" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, originally published in 1848, early in the writer's career. Film adaptations have been made by Russian director Ivan Pyryev , by Italian director Luchino Visconti , by French director Robert Bresson , by Iranian director Farzad Motamen...

.