Luis Buñuel was a director who liked to push buttons and flaunt conventions. Beside his famed surrealist short, UN CHIEN ANDALOU, this is the first film of his I have seen. Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) is a 23-year-old, frigid newlywed, whose husband, Pierre (Jean Sorel, A QUIET PLACE TO KILL), is a doctor. She loves her husband, but really isn’t turned on by his classic good looks and his devotion to her purity.
Through their sleazy family friend, Henri Husson (Michel Piccoli, ATLANTIC CITY), Séverine learns of a brothel where married woman go while their husbands are at work. Curious and driven by an inner compulsion, Séverine goes to the whorehouse and becomes an afternoon prostitute named Belle de Jour.
The film mixes real life with fantasy, only using fetish symbols to distinguish the difference between the two. Séverine is a masochist, who is highly aroused by mean, dangerous men. The film is deceptively layered and understands eroticism perfectly. Like comedy, what is erotic is particular to each individual and there is no way to explain it to someone else fully.
There is a teasing nature to the film, which contains no sex scenes and only brief nudity. The erotic nature of the film is always left up to the imagination, which is perfect, because each person watching can fill in the blanks with their own private images. Why Séverine is aroused by cats and bells is never explained and she probably doesn’t know as well.
Beside its observation of eroticism, the film has a subtle satirical layer. Séverine’s masochism is a stab at her place in society as the beautiful, classy and virgin-like wife of a young upward mobile man. Her dirty fantasies expose the hypocrisy of elite society. Both Henri and Pierre casually talk about going to brothels, but women have the societal pressure of being aghast that they even exist.
There is a wonderfully telling scene where Madame Anais (Geneviève Page, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES) makes Séverine watch a gynecologist client and another prostitute. Séverine’s reaction underlines Buñuel’s satire of high-society by showing the conflicted woman saying what she feels she must and feeling something totally different.
Buñuel’s use of camera is gorgeous and Deneuve is ravishingly beautiful. I couldn’t think of a different actress in the role. She exemplifies the pure tone between innocence and mysterious sexuality. The end of the film is unexpected and quite telling about Séverine’s character. It’s one of those slow burning films that doesn’t blow you way, but plants a seed in your brain that cannot be forgetten or easily dismissed. The story is so seemingly simple and straightforward that you may miss its depth until it's thought about afterward. This is what makes it so brilliant.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
