Considering Bob Dole's sniping about the moral
downfall of contemporary Hollywood, it's
interesting to note that the two most violent
pictures I've seen this year are re-releases: Sam
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, and now Luis
Bunuel's 1967 classic Belle De Jour. The
latter is such a dispassionate portrayal of
sadism, masochism, incest, and necrophilia, I
can't even imagine its being equaled by anything
upcoming. Time isn't kind to art intended to
shock, and Belle De Jour's storyline
("Sexually repressed bourgeois housewife gets a
day job as a prostitute? How quaint.") barely
raises an eyebrow these days. But the film itself,
like so much of Bunuel's work, remains a stunner.
The housewife is Severine Serizy (Catherine
Deneuve), whose erotic life with her husband
Pierre (Jean Sorel) is nonexistent, owing in part
to the anxiety she still feels over sexual abuse
she suffered as a child. Her fantasy life,
however, is vivid. The film opens with an extended
sequence wherein, under Pierre's orders, Severine
is dragged from a coach, whipped, and raped by the
two coachmen. Like all of the sex scenes that
follow, you're free to be aroused or disgusted, to
find humor or horror. Bunuel's camera might as
well be gazing at a flock of sheep, considering
how placidly it takes everything in. Severine
learns an acquaintance earns extra money at a
brothel. At first she's surprised such places
still exist, then insatiably curious. Eventually,
Severine gets a day job at Mme. Anais'
establishment, quickly becoming a favorite with
the customers due to her lack of inhibition. Plot
complications arrive with a young robber Severine
grows attached to, but the film's surprises have
little to do with plot.
Announced as the final film of Bunuel's career
(as was each of his subsequent five), Belle De
Jour isn't a valedictory summation designed to
show off the innovations its creator can claim as
his own-for that I'd turn to the magnificently
incomprehensible Exterminating Angel of
1962-but rather a testament to the perfection and
elegance of the director's craft. Bunuel's
anticlericalism raises its head here and there,
and his politics are much in evidence-this must be
the most class-conscious movie ever made about
prostitutes, and that's saying something-but for
all the taboos being hurdled you're never
distracted by a sense of anger or antagonism.
Bunuel just looked at the world he saw and filmed
it. His genius comes in the way he manages to
convince you that it's your world as well.
From Film.com
<
BACK