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We are less circumspect about sexual matters than people were when Luis Buñuel filmed this chronicle about a bourgeois housewife who takes afternoon shifts at an upscale whore-house, but shock and titillation are not at the movie’s core. Buñuel is more interested in merging the independent realms of dream/daydream and reality and overturning the privileged situation of the latter.
Catherine Deneuve is perfect as the icy Séverine, whose fantasies run to bondage, discipline and sex with servants – all the things her loving, insipid surgeon husband can’t provide. The brothel serves her needs explicitly, until a gangster’s possessive passion smashes the carefully erected walls between her worlds.
Divers commentators give the movie a good going-over from aesthetic, Freudian and feminist perspectives, but Buñuel prefers secrecy to explanation, and the ambiguity of Belle De Jour’s final form remains unsolved.
EXTRAS Commentary, new writer interview, archival Deneuve and novelist interviews, feminist discussion, essay booklet. French audio. English subtitles.
Source: NOW Toronto