Belle
de jour (****)
review by Jon
Waterman
Séverine has been married to Pierre, a successful doctor,
for a full year now. Although she says that she loves him very
much, she can’t seem to bring herself to express that
through physical intimacy. The couple sleeps in separate beds
and any advances he makes get turned down. Knowing the strife
it causes him, as well as herself, she decides to take a drastic
measure to hopefully remedy the situation. She begins working
as a lady of the evening (or in this case afternoon so that
she can be home when her husband arrives), forcing herself
to cater to every whim and desire that her clients have. This
seemingly insane technique just may be working, but how long
can her double life go uncompromised?
Luis Buñuel directs and co-writes (with Jean-Claude
Carrière) this intriguing and mysterious tale of sexual
deviance and fantasy. And although it may not be as surreal
as some of Buñuel’s other work (“Un chien
andalou,” “L’Âge d'or”), psychologists
around the world can still have a field day with this one.
That’s not to say there aren’t some surreal moments
to be had. There are a couple of flashbacks to what I can only
assume is Séverine as a young girl that are extremely
brief. One appears to have more meaning than the other. The
way the fantasy sequences are integrated with the rest of the
pictures is unique and jarring. They make you question what
in the entire picture is actually real. There are the purposefully
dropped frames during the scene where Séverine has mud
splattered on her. And then there’s that last scene right
after watching a perfect ending. You can’t tell me there’s
a concrete answer as to what that means.
But it’s not just the filmmaking that’s fascinating.
It’s the mysterious nature of Séverine and the
rest of the cast. You’re given general impressions and
it’s not too hard to put together the basic ideas as
to what’s going on or how the dynamic works. However,
you’re never given a “why.” They mystery
of the movie doesn’t lie within her secret life as a
prostitute. It comes from the lack of understanding we have
of her relationship to her husband. The story doesn’t
delve too much into what she does to hide her dark secret from
him, because that’s not the point. The point is that
she has to deal with her inner feelings of living this life
to begin with, while at the same time refusing to stop the
self-destructive behavior.
And Catherine Deneuve (Séverine) isn’t going
to give us any hints towards those feelings either. For the
most part, she carries a strong, seemingly cold, expressionless
face. She certainly conveys the sense of emptiness that her
character is apparently feeling. Deneuve does a great job in
that she shuts the audience off as well as her husband. We’re
given more glimpses into her psyche and motivations, but we
may never really know what drove her to take those actions.
She’s teasing us the way she inadvertently teases him.
That brings me to my next point. I find it interesting that
a tale about a woman in the sex trade was executed with no
frontal nudity. Then again, it’s really not about the
eroticism at all, it’s about the ramifications of her
behavior. I don’t believe that the movie is intended
to arouse anything except a healthy discussion and debate afterwards
as well as some self-reflection.
The film accomplishes exactly what it sets out to. We’re
treated with some nice shots of the city of Paris and its countryside
(by cinematographer Sacha Vierny, “Hiroshima mon amour”).
But more importantly we’re presented with a solid story
that’s extremely simple in its nature, but completely
unpredictable and complex in its telling. This is the kind
of film that deserves and warrants extensive analyzation. And
something tells me that almost every theory or interpretation
is probably right.
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