L'Argent (1983, M)

Dir: Robert Bresson, France, 85mins, 35mm

A dissolute young man from France’s upper classes demands money from his father. Rejected, he sells his watch to a friend. The friend pays with a counterfeit note. In the days afterward, we follow the money, fake and real, as the outcome of one petty crime and act of betrayal escalates and exposes the worst of human nature. Bresson’s final film returned to Russian literature (in this case Tolstoy) for inspiration. But the achievement of essaying a sweeping, multi-character treatise on the moral corruption of socio-economic forces – and in just under 90 minutes – was purely Bressonian. Presented with the support of the Embassy of France and the Institut Français.