Highly recommended. Absolutely first rate French art / sleaze from Luis Bunuel capturing Deneuve at the height of her beauty. Neurotic young bride Severine loves her boy-scout perfect doctor husband, so much so that she recoils from his touch. Day and night she is tormented by vivid masochistic sex fantasies.After hearing the address of a local brothel she seeks employment there working afternoons (hence the title) while her husband is at work. Severine finds sexual and emotional satisfaction in being ordered about by the paying customers and grows to love her husband more and more, though not physically.
Events begin to spiral out of control when she becomes involved with an unsettling young criminal--a cocaine dealer and murderer with a cane and metal teeth.
Run Time:100 minutes . Region 1 encoding
Belle de Jour has a close connection to exploitation film-making. The plot is indistinguishable from a 1960s sexploitation film but the execution is sublime. (If I could say one thing to all aspiring artists it would be that what you say is not as important as how you say it.) Belle de Jour is derived from a long tradition of French erotic literature that preceded it. In turn, the film became the chief stylistic inspiration for the best of the 1970s French erotic film genre.
Belle de Jour evidences the interplay of artistic intent and social mores, with film censorship standards dictating an artistic motif. Belle de Jour has a visual theme of semi-transparency. Things are often seen indirectly, in mirrors, through rain-streaked windows, etc.. We cannot be sure, however, how much of our obscured vision of Severine is artistic intention versus social accommodation. We see her in the shower through fogged glass, walking nude through an immense villa in a transparent black floor-length veil. In the brothel we do not see her bare breasts but we do see her pubic hair delineated through her thin panties.
Is the theme of transparency Bunuel's vision or the government's? The thing is, 1968 was a tipping point year in film nudity. there was a brief period where transparency had a special status. In 1966 actresses wore panties so utterly opaque they must have been reinforced for film use. In 1970 full nudity was legal in most places. But in 1968-1969 film censors put great stock in there being a conceptual barrier. fabric, glass, fog. some vague concession or acknowledgement that forbidden things should not be seen directly or in the light of day.
