Belle de Jour
Directed by Luis Buñuel
- drama
- romance
The story
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
What it’s like
Cool, composed interiors shot with a deadpan stillness: pale Parisian daylight through tall apartment windows, and a brothel bathed in dim red and gold. Buñuel holds on immaculate tableaux and lets the camera wait, so a sudden cut into a fantasy, marked by a bell, a ticking clock or a shift in the sound, lands like a jolt. The mood is cool, ironic and elegantly unsettling, a clinical study of desire wearing a respectable coat. Sexual content is frank but not explicit, with nudity and sex depicted with dry detachment. Violence is brief, sharp and largely imagined, with a few abrupt, startling moments. The pace is unhurried, with a rhythm of routine punctured by strange interludes, and the tone is sly, sardonic and ambiguous rather than warm. Its people are guarded and divided, a woman living between two selves and a marriage that cannot quite reach her. It suits viewers who enjoy provocative European art cinema, Catherine Deneuve's watchful reserve, and surrealist humour, and it is not a gentle or comforting watch.
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