We got another thing coming undone.

February 22, 2012

1968, Luis Buñuel

A hypnotic blend of fantasy and reality, Belle De Jour is the first film I’ve seen from Luis Buñuel and it certainly won’t be the last. The opening scene is a memorable one, as Severine and Pierre Serizy (Catherine Deneuve and Jean Sorel) ride in a carriage through the woods, before he drags her out, ties her to a tree and has the drivers whip and rape her. This shocking image turns out to be just a fantasy of Severine’s, but it immediately lets the viewer know that there is a caged erotic mind locked away underneath the titular character’s frigid exterior.

The film uses these fantasies frequently, and it’s in Buñuel’s approach to them that the film sets itself apart from the way others might use this meshing of truth and fiction. We are never given any warning signs that we are entering a dream state, there’s never a blur or fade into them, he doesn’t shoot them in a way unique from how he shoots her daily life, and thus Buñuel catches the audience in this world between worlds. Deneuve, ever alluring and catching of the eyes, walks through her life as a woman in a trance, stuck between her lurid fantasies and her more traditional reality, and Buñuel places the audience in this same spell.

Severine is a mysterious character, one who dreams of being sexually humiliated and violated, yet for some reason she remains sterile within her own marriage, despite her husband’s numerous efforts. Severine finds herself compelled by her sexual desires to enter employment at a local whorehouse, and in this world she is able to slowly reveal her inner nature. Belle De Jour is a character study in the most interesting sense, because it never aims to fully explore it’s character. We are given the understanding of why she travels down the path she does, but the character ultimately remains an ambiguous mystery, both to the audience and perhaps to herself.

It’s plausible that even she doesn’t know why she can’t open herself physically to her husband, and her actions to explore her inner desires are a way not only for her to release her sexual frustration but also to try and understand what drives her. This approach to the character could have been cold and uninviting, shutting it’s audience away from any level of interest, but with a team as skilled as Buñuel and Deneuve it becomes a fascinating journey into the mind of Severine, always compelling in it’s refusal to give the audience the easy answers.

The narrative takes a more direct turn with the introduction of Marcel (Pierre Clementi), a client for Severine who becomes dangerously obsessed with her and is the complete counter of Pierre. The introduction of Marcel was both a blessing and a curse for me, because while it advanced the narrative and Severine’s personal struggles, I found myself so entertained by him and his partner in crime Hyppolite (Francisco Rabal) that I wanted to see a film entirely dedicated to the two of them. Buñuel’s Belle De Jour plays out like a dream state all the way to it’s chilling finale, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

B+

Film #70 of The 365 Film Challenge.

6:49pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlWstxGsg0gF

(Notes: 4)