Belle de jour (1967)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 101m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti
Synopsis:
A woman whose husband is a successful surgeon is to all appearances a model, if frigid, wife but is troubled by masochistic fantasies and works out her need for self-abasement by spending her afternoons working in a respectable maison de rendez-vous.
Review:
Classic Buñuelian play on audience assumptions of reality, as well as a delicious exposé of the repressed sexuality of the bourgeoisie. Performed, as it should be, completely straight and with a certain delicacy: the brothel is a surrogate home for Séverine, with the madame as a mother figure. The two strands of fantasy and reality are kept clearly defined until the film's final scene, showing that, rather like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Séverine is 'cured'.
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 101m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti
Synopsis:
A woman whose husband is a successful surgeon is to all appearances a model, if frigid, wife but is troubled by masochistic fantasies and works out her need for self-abasement by spending her afternoons working in a respectable maison de rendez-vous.
Review:
Classic Buñuelian play on audience assumptions of reality, as well as a delicious exposé of the repressed sexuality of the bourgeoisie. Performed, as it should be, completely straight and with a certain delicacy: the brothel is a surrogate home for Séverine, with the madame as a mother figure. The two strands of fantasy and reality are kept clearly defined until the film's final scene, showing that, rather like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Séverine is 'cured'.
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 101m
Director: Luis Buñuel
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti
Synopsis:
A woman whose husband is a successful surgeon is to all appearances a model, if frigid, wife but is troubled by masochistic fantasies and works out her need for self-abasement by spending her afternoons working in a respectable maison de rendez-vous.
Review:
Classic Buñuelian play on audience assumptions of reality, as well as a delicious exposé of the repressed sexuality of the bourgeoisie. Performed, as it should be, completely straight and with a certain delicacy: the brothel is a surrogate home for Séverine, with the madame as a mother figure. The two strands of fantasy and reality are kept clearly defined until the film's final scene, showing that, rather like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Séverine is 'cured'.