Reviewed by Adam Boult
Stars Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier, Jean Sorel | Written by Luis Bunuel & Manoel de Oliveira
UK cert 18 | UK RRP £25.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 169 minutes | Directed by Luis Bunuel & Manoel de Oliveira
Regarded by many as Luis Bunuel's best and most accessible work, Belle De Jour stars Catherine Deneuve as Séverine, a young upper-middle class newlywed whose cold detachment from her husband belies an elaborate fantasy life largely centered on brutally masochistic sexual encounters. When an eccentric and lascivious acquaintance, Husson (Piccoli), reminisces to her about a high-class brothel he used to frequent, she seeks it out and begins to spend her otherwise empty afternoons working as a prostitute.
Séverine is initially a difficult character to warm to, and deliberately so, but this gradually changes as the audience is taken into her head to witness her masochistic daydreams in a series of surreal vignettes. While these fantasy scenes never detract from the film's essential ambiguity, they nevertheless provide tantalising hints towards the reasons behind the protagonist's amoral actions, opening up aspects of the character that remain hidden to those around her.
Despite the sleazy-sounding plot, taken from Joseph Kessel’s novel of the same name, Belle De Jour is a sensitive and intelligent piece of film-making that explores female sexuality with a lightness of touch that keeps it far from the realms of pornography. Though undoubtedly an "erotic film" - and marketed as such - Belle De Jour is almost prudish by modern standards; there's barely any nudity, and any carnal acts are predominantly left in the mind of the viewer. Bunuel is less concerned with titillating his audience than with presenting fascinatingly complex characters and tentatively investigating what drives them.
Belle Toujours, an odd and rather slight sequel to Belle De Jours, takes place 40 years after the events of the first film. Husson (again played by Piccoli) bumps into Severine (with Bulle Ogier filling Deneuve’s shoes) at a concert in Paris. After she initially flees from him, he eventually tracks her down and they spend an uncomfortable evening together raking over Severine’s past – specifically, the events of Belle De Jour.
Written and directed by Portuguese centenarian Manoel de Oliveira, currently the world’s oldest director, Belle Toujours is competently acted and beautifully filmed, but overall it feels more like glossy fan-fiction than a genuine work in its own right. It’s fairly audacious to attempt a follow up to a film of Belle De Jour’s stature, and rather than bringing anything fresh to the table de Oliveira only seems to be interested in offering up his own interpretation of what Bunuel was trying to say, while simultaneously sounding a resigned, whimsical sigh about the passage of time. Viewed less as a conventional sequel and more as a companion piece to Belle De Jour, Belle Toujours is entirely unnecessary, yet not without a few charms of its own.
EXTRAS *** Trailer; featurette on the history of Belle De Jour; commentary.