Mademoiselle

“Mademoiselle” is a respected figure in the village as a schoolteacher. No one suspects the loneliness and sexual frustration that drive her to acts of destruction. She sets fires and poisons livestock. The suspicion falls on the woodcutter Manou, whom she seduces and then accuses of rape.

In Tony Richardson’s film Mademoiselle, Moreau — in perhaps her most unconventional role — crushes a bird’s nest with its eggs, and then destroys a village and her lover, all with the faint smile of a woman who knows that life has passed her by, yet still wants to leave her mark.

— Die Zeit