One wonders what really led the French government to ban "Le Diable, Probablement", a film directed by one of French cinema's most admired directors Robert Bresson. It does not have anything to incite young people to commit suicides and participate in riots. The film makes good use of mixing documentary footage with those of a feature film. This technique results in enabling viewers to know more about various actors and their personal motivations. The neutrality of French youth is revealed through the depiction of a simple youth who express intentions of avoiding society in order not to be misled. The title comes from a sentence uttered by a middle-aged man on in a bus. There are a plenty of Bressonian touches in this film about a young man who is liked by two women. However, this is not the only thing which admirers and fans of Robert Bresson can look out to watch. A serious viewer can also watch how the story of a suicide disguised as a murder was revealed on time.

My Rating : 8/10

With only a 14-film oeuvre, Bresson is undoubtably the most minimalist yet original filmmaker ever to have graced this planet. To me he is the embodiment of purity in all of cinema as his work harrows the soul much deeply than any other filmmaker. Using untrained actors and methodically sculpting their sense of surprise and spontaneity Bresson exploits the interiority of a human being (or animal in the case of 'Au Hasard Balthazar') to be transferred on camera and therefore reveal a flow of visual imagery of 'feeling' which he called 'cinematography' as that is what distinguished cinema from theatre and literature according to him.

Our intellect fools us but our feelings reveal the bitter truths of the world. So when Charles (the young protagonist) says he sees everything 'too clearly' it is because he feels too much and therefore unable to succumb to the industrialised automation around him.

Hopelessness, despair, existentialism - it is all here and it's only purpose is to invite the viewer on a journey of frustration because the frustration is an evolutionary achievement and therefore a necessity (at least according to me...and Bresson).

If you don't know anything about France's Robert Bresson's concentrated work, it's almost a crime to start here- like getting into the most boring, baguette-laden video game ever, at the "expert" level. That said, this movie has some merit to it, and a dose of Bresson's twenty-something rebels could be valuable for viewers accustomed to Jason Biggs ' shenanigans. The Devil, undeniably, possesses a new way to capture discontent. A newspaper tells us of a suicide from the beginning; then there is a revised headline. It's killing now.Cut to six months earlier when, in a collective countercultural snarl, a bunch of sullen, unlikely thin Parisians lounge on the waterfront.

Our hero is Charles (Antoine Monnier), hair lank, stare blank and a floppy man-purse accessorized. He hates all: the "destructive" situationists' phony rebellion with their angry meetings, Christianity, environmentalism- even sex, it's suggested. Charles's just not in anything.The film charts its trajectory towards self-annihilation sympathetically; but the beauty of the film (as with all Bresson) lies in its focus on simple details: the clicking of shoes in nondescript halls, the fashion-spread-ready poses of sexy, ennui-laced young people. Here there is a higher dimension, not as clear as it is in the Mouchette or A Man Escaped director, but present the same thing. Hold on to something, implies Bresson, or you might fall in love with boredom itself. Look at it for the mood.