In one scene of UNE FEMME DOUCE, the main characters attend a mediocre local production of Hamlet. Whenever Bresson cuts to the play, he abandons his “formalism” and films the actors head-on, without any trace of the cinematic. The effect here is jarring because all of a sudden the viewer is pulled out of the intriguing, internally consistent world of Bressonian aesthetics and into the mundane realm of “filmed theater” that the artist so passionately (or was it dispassionately?) railed against.