Belle de Jour
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Movie Reviews of Belle de Jour
Movie Review: We Saw the Seeds Sown in Repulsion
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw Belle de Jour in the late 1960's at an art movie house in Vancouver, B.C. It was very well received and it is hard to remember if Luis Bunuel's film made many waves in the film-viewing community. All that stands out in my memory was that I felt very grown up and intelligent at sixteen for having been fortunate enough to get by the Restricted rating of the time. Needless to say, the Belle de Jour seem somewhat tame by today's sexual standards. However, by today's standards of what is offensive in the portrayal of women, Belle de Jour still has the original power to shock viewers with the content of Severine's (Catherine Deneuve) fantasy life.
Severine desires the degradation and perversions of depraved men to satisfy her own sexual needs. By signing up with the local high-class sex boutique (its seems unfair to consign Madame Anaiis and her girls to the brothel category) as a prostitute, her repressed desires surface and she is on her way to sexual fulfillment. Add to that, her life as the pampered and indulged wife of a financially successful husband, and Severine becomes rather happily integrated with her days and nights in this dubious double-life.
So much for the X-rated porn film theme. Then comes reality. Luis Bunuel has so sucessfully combined the scenes of reality and fantasy, the fantasy being mercifully short, that one needs to rely instead upon the hard-core cinematic clues to what is real. Of course, it is all real, but reality emerges inevitably in several symbolic frames. My favourite is the shot of the criminal client Marcel's feet as he sheds his trendy boots to reveal a big hole in the heel of his sock. That is to say nothing of his metal dental braces serving as replacements for what were once his front teeth. Just kissing this creep would be debasement enough for most women.
If joining a "maison" filled with lovable kinky customers were a way to find liberation and sexual fulfillment, who knows how many of us would sign up? That is the question that Luis Bunuel leaves on the table. The reality is what is always was, money and sex don't mix in much the same way that gambling and drinking don't mix. Severine probably would have been bored flat whether she were an elegant Parisian housewife or the mother of five kids and the wife of a farmer. Just like the Duke who wanted her to be the surrogate dead sister left to rot in the casket. The reality there being kicked out on the street after the deed was done.
Belle de Jour is a moral and sensible film while capturing the human frailties and ugly realities of lives gone wrong. Luis Bunuel had his very strong left-wing politics to be sure, but his genius as a film-maker was to film these characters and this story with restraint and objectivity.
Movie Review: Male fantasy of female fantasies?
Summary: 5 Stars
According to a long, interesting interview with the writer, Jean-Claude Carriere, and the assistant director, Jean Lary, which came with my disc (Studio Canal: Reg 2), all the masochistic footage for this film had been extremely thoroughly researched before its release in 1967. These were all "real" fantasies recounted by real women. Those parts of the film which were superficially presented as real, therefore, ie the idea that a doctor's wife would actually spend her afternoons being humiliated in a maison de joie, were fantastic; and the fantasy sequences were actually "real". Disorienting, isn't it? The first question is if these female fantasies of being dominated by brutal men are being repeated today, 40 years later. Seems unlikely. The next question is if anything in the story is real. Isn't the whole thing completely surreal? Nothing of what unfolds need have actually happened at all, including the bit about the husband being shot and sitting paralysed in a wheelchair: it's all his wife's dream. Why is the husband shown staring at an empty wheelchair in the street in one scene? The wife may even have fantasised about being molested as a little girl, and also fantasises about her husband being a helplessly passive baby, who needs to be looked after --- since she hasn't a child of her own. An idle bourgeois wife --- one of Bunuel's typical targets --- has nothing else to occupy her mind during the day.
The film is promoted as being "erotic". That sells tickets. It didn't seem erotic to me in the slightest, in fact it was all a very cold and intellectual puzzle. The whole scenario was highly unemotional and artificial: the elegant home of the couple, their smart clothes, the tidy, domestic brothel, the stereotypical customers, the stereotypical gangsters with their pulp fiction dialogue and behaviour. The photography seemed flat, without depth, and the assistant director comments that darkness and shadows were deliberately avoided.
Since I find puzzles fascinating, it was very interesting and entertaining to watch. Kubrick's clumsy Eyes Wide Shut seems to have been inspired by it, just as his clumsy The Shining was inspired by Last Year at Marienbad. Both these French films are intellectually far superior to anything produced by Hollywood these days.
Movie Review: Erotica According To Bunuel.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Belle De Jour" by the great Luis Bunuel is the best example of what true eroticism is in the cinema. It is an exquisite, seductive and stylish, also surreal, fantasy that enraptures us by not only picking at the main character's brain, but at ours as well. This is not a movie about sex, or at least, the physical aspects of it, this is a movie about the idea and fantasy of sex, it delivers the reason why we're attracted to sexuality or sexually stimulating images in the first place. This also makes it a rare psychological movie. Some may say it is also a perfect portrait of the masochist woman, and this indeed may be true (Bunuel was a big fan of the Marquis De Sade) considering Severine (the lovely Catherine Deneuve), we notice, is especially turned on by the violent aspects of what she is doing more than the secretive. This is required viewing for fans of erotica, surrealism and brilliant filmmaking. Notice how Bunuel sets a completely seductive air without a single sex scene, this movie shames trash like "Caligula" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien." Here is one of the masters giving a lesson on what is erotic. Much of what we perceive as sexually alluring (weather it may be "twisted" or "normal") is born in our imaginations and this is one point Bunuel makes, it is Severine's fantasies that really drive the movie. Visually the movie is very stylish with the elegant clothing, settings and of course, Deneuve, one of the beauties of her time. There are the usual Bunuel touches, bizaare scenes of surrealism (as when Severine is caked in mud by her husband before a herd of bulls in a dream sequence) and shots following Severine's feet (Bunuel was a well-known foot fetishist). His brilliance for characters and scenarios is here too, giving complex deliveries with simple-looking set-ups. Bunuel remains one of the giants of filmmaking, having made the notorious and classic 1929 surrealist film with Salvador Dali, "Un Chien Andalou" with the famous image of a razor slicing a woman's eyeball. His Mexican films like the highly influential "Los Olvidados" and the controversial "Virdiana" are also hypnotic gems, but when he returned to European filmmaking in the late 60s his career really took off and "Belle De Jour" is one of those first great masterpieces. It is a movie done with style, taste and truth.Movie Review: Served hot.
Summary: 5 Stars
The best film Martin Scorcese has been involved with since *The Last Temptation of Christ* is one he didn't direct: 1967's *Belle de Jour*, by master-director Luis Bunuel. The fact that this movie's re-release, overseen by Scorcese in 1995, created a sensation in art-houses only illustrates what a graveyard European cinema is today by comparison. At any rate . . . *Belle de Jour* is about a repressed, wealthy young housewife who finds herself irresistably drawn to a high-class Parisian whorehouse. She becomes a part-time employee, working the day-shift from 2 to 5, before beating it back home before clueless hubby returns from work. Because this is Bunuel, you may find yourself wondering what's really happening to Catherine Deneuve and what she's simply fantasizing. Don't worry about it. Remember that for Bunuel, the interior and exterior life had the same level of importance; it was all life to him, and therefore real. Applying a magnifying glass to your TV screen in order to look for "clues" that demonstrate either reality or fantasy would be missing the point. I suppose that in the final analysis, *Belle de Jour* will aggravate meat-and-potatoes movie-watchers craving linear narrative. (You know who you are, and you've been warned.) The rest will rightly not give a hoot about "reality", and will enjoy the comical details in this study of sexual fantasies and obsession. The autumnal photography by cinematography legend Sacha Vierny, as well as the magisterial direction itself -- as unobtrusive as it is stylish, an effect earned by Bunuel's 40 years of hard work --, should win over those sitting on the fence. Finally, it must be said that those who thought Stanley Kubrick's *Eyes Wide Shut* was a masterpiece will have their eyes wide opened when they see sexual obsession done right, as it is in *Belle de Jour*. [The DVD looks great. The subtitles, however, are questionable at best. Those seeking to broaden their horizons with a foreign movie can be advised to use the dubbing option to help them along -- something I've never advised, but the translations are THAT bad. Also comes with commentary by a "Bunuel scholar": it's amusing to listen to her try to decipher a movie that not even the director entirely understood.]Movie Review: Truly exceptional cinematic experience...
Summary: 5 Stars
A life in the upper-class requires many things such as leisure, discretion, grace, and money. Severine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) has all these qualities in an abundance as she goes about her daily duties such as shopping and playing tennis while maintaining an exterior beauty. In this luxurious environment the women often find themselves bored, depressed, or discontented with their lives as they often seek other means of exploring life. A friend of Severine reveals that one of her acquaintances is secretly working as a prostitute for monetary purposes. This fascinates Severine's innocent curiosity as she is rather oblivious of sex and her own sexuality. Through a friend of her husband, who also is attracted by Severine's innocent sex appeal, Severine learns the whereabouts of a small private brothel. The curiosity of Severine forces her to explore the brothel as well as her own sexuality as she begins to deal with her guilt, morality, and her Catholic values.
Belle de Jour is a film that explores the human curiosity when time and place is conveniently infused with what is forbidden. Severine's curiosity presents itself when her boredom sets in as it does through her daily routine, which lacks significant meaning. The time and place for Severine's curiosity is presented through her friends as they serve her the forbidden fruit. Initially Severine circles the issue like a cat around hot milk that is afraid of getting burnt, but when she takes a bite of the forbidden fruit she becomes obsessed with what has been presented to her. However, it also presents a backside of the issue at hand as she must deal with the moral consequences of what she is doing.
Luis Bunuel directed a brilliant film that is full of allegorical imagery that urges the audience to ponder the dualism of Severine's situation. The dualism stems from what Severine desires as it produces both guilt and pleasure interjectionally. Bunuel creates this guilt-pleasure atmosphere with an artistic manner that is saturated in psychological insights of moral predicaments. This is visualized though Bunuel's brilliant direction as it offers a truly exceptional cinematic experience.