The Hussy

Twenty-year-old François makes a living collecting boxes and bottles and selling them to local shopkeepers; he lives with his mother and stepfather, and is humiliated there. Mado is an eleven-year-old girl who is unloved in her own house as well. One day François takes Mado and shuts her in the room in the attic. They stay there for a while. Mado does not try to escape; she finds more attention there than she gets at home. Jacques Doillon's film comes from a real case, and the position it holds is a difficult one: it never legitimises the abduction at any point, it does not soften what the child is going through, and it does not look away from what forms between the two of them either. The camera does not interpret; it watches. Neither performer is professional. The film took the youth prize at Cannes in 1979. When the police arrive at the end, the way the whole thing is seen changes completely, and that is where the film leaves its discomfort.