Directed by
Luis Buñuel
Starring
Catherine Deneuve (Séverine Serizy)
Jean Sorel (Pierre Serizy)
Michel Piccoli (Henri Husson)
Geneviève Page (Madame Anais)
Pierre Clémenti (Marcel)
Françoise Fabian (Charlotte)
Macha Méril (Renee)
Muni (Pallas)
Maria Latour (Mathilde)
Claude Cerval
Michel Charrel (Footman)
Iska Khan (Asian client)
Bernard Musson (Majordomo)
Marcel Charvey (Professor Henri)
François Maistre (L'ensignant)
Written by
Luis Buñuel
Jean-Claude Carrière
Rated:  |
A young Paris housewife, Séverine, grows bored with her
stable husband. When she learns of the presence of a high-class
brothel in her neighborhood, she quietly goes to work there--but
only during the day, until five o'clock in the afternoon. This
sublime 1967 film is one of the latter-day masterpieces of the
Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel, whose career forms
one of the greatest and boldest arcs in cinema. By the time of
Belle de Jour, Buñuel had become almost completely deadpan
in his style, which not only leaves the motivation of Séverine
a mystery (despite a few flashbacks to degradations of her youth),
but also casts the entire plot in doubt. An old surrealist from
the 1920s (when his first classic, Un Chien Andalou, was made
in collaboration with Salvador Dali), Buñuel suggests
that what we see may be real, or simply Séverine's imagination.
Because he was the least pretentious of directors, Buñuel
keeps his material playful, wicked, yet cutting. As Séverine,
the impossibly lovely Catherine Deneuve uses her cool demeanor
to great effect--she never breaks her deadpan, either. In 1995,
after having been out of official circulation for years, Belle
de Jour was re-released in America and became an unexpected art-house
hit. --Robert Horton
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