Belle de Jour (1967)

Directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Jean Sorel, Geneviève Page, Pierre Clémenti, Françoise Fabian, Maria Latour, Macha Méril, Francis Blanche, Marguerite Muni.

Buñuel’s best-known work sees Deneuve impeccably cast as a housewife who is turned off by sexual intimacy with husband Sorel, yet is imprisoned by her own urges, and harbors outrageous S&M and humiliation fantasies (the depiction of which represent the most obvious “Buñuel-ian” touch). She reluctantly decides to take up an offer by one of her husband’s impudent friends (Piccoli) to moonlight (er, daylight?) as a high-class prostitute a few days a week while Sorel is at work. Seen through Deneuve’s cold yet striking eyes, the viewer is welcomed with an alluring gesture into her private world, one where imagination and reality never quite blur, but take on yin-and-yang qualities within the terrain of her needs and desires. There’s no sugar-coating either aspect—the eroticism is brazen and charged, but not goosed-up with gauzy visuals or clever editing for the purposes of polished titillation—and the Mona Lisa mystery of Deneuve’s half smiles is a wonder. The filmmaker’s dispassionate feel for the characters doesn’t serve an episode of concocted violence late in the film, more of a plot device than an organic consequence of character action (and inaction), but the sly ambiguity of the ending should leave the viewer with the same indifferently pleased expression as the star. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1967 Venice Film Festival.

82/100