A Bela da Tarde

While you're happy in your marriage you're not fulfilled, spend most days dreaming of how you might become thrilled, usually involving pain, along with force while you're restrained, at the hands of one or more, who are strong willed. A conversation means you make enquiry, and Madame Anais takes you on, as a payee, for services professional, private and discretional, just as long as you can stop in time for tea (about 5pm).

But of course things invariably go awry and your pleasures are curtailed but you still have your fantasy and imagination. Another great Catherine Deneuve performance that, if nothing else, shows just how conservative the world was compared with today.

The always provocative Luis Buñuel directed (and co-wrote with Jean-Claude Carrière) this adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1928 novel, about the beautiful, apparently frigid 23 year-old wife (Catherine Deneuve) of a surgeon (Jean Sorel) who decides to live her fantasies at a brothel in the afternoons.

Here, as in several of his films, Buñuel makes a sharp, often disturbing, sometimes darkly funny, and always provocative meditation on the lifelessness of the French bourgeoisie, focusing on the boredom and private rebellion of a young woman so absorbed in her own fantasies that we don't know if what we are seeing is actually happening or only taking place in Severine's mind. Deneuve, gorgeous as ever, flawlessly plays Severine with a cold distance which is nothing short of intriguing. A character which could have easily been turned into a caricature, Deneuve makes Severine come alive in flesh and quiet desperation.

Although more discreetly than in some of his other films, here Buñuel also criticizes - with symbols, allegories, some subtler than others - the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church as an institution. His hand of surrealism, social and religious provocation make for a film that, over four decades after its release, remains strange, somewhat disturbing, and energetic. Severine is not a heroine or an activist for anything, but her rebellion is about her own deathly bourgeois condition. Prostitution here is never glamorized (even though, unlike the other prostitutes in the film, Severine is not doing it for the money - she doesn't need it); the clients are hideous-looking, quite often creepy and violent. Severine needs an escape from her suffocating life, and in her fantasies, the rougher, the better. If being a rebel is defying some sort of establishment (for whatever reason), then Severine is definitely a rebel figure; she defied not only society's moral grounds of decency (albeit slyly), but also her own inner demons. The answers to whether Severine's rebellion was worth anything is for the spectator to decide - and there lies the richness of Buñuel's surrealist creation. 10/10.

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) is a bored, affluent housewife. We meet her first when she is forced to dismount from a carriage. Her husband Pierre ties her to a tree, whips her, then leaves her to be raped by the two carriage drivers.

Séverine is prone to fantasies. She is in a conventional marriage. Pierre is a handsome young surgeon. They sleep in separate beds. An older friend, Henri, keeps hitting on her, but she tells him to keep his compliments for himself. He is attracted by her blonde perfection, her virtue and her icy disdain.

Taking fantasy a stage further, Séverine gets a daytime job at a high class brothel. At first she is prudish and wants to pick her clients. Then she is shown 'a firm hand' - which the masochistic side of her nature relishes.

Re-released almost forty years after its original cinema exhibition, Belle de Jour still has the power to shock. Not through explicit nudity (it is a highly erotic work without being titillating) but by the shocking images, and the superb performances that contrast the aloofness of the bourgeoisie to the practicality of sex, of elegance to depravity. Scenes of Séverine having mud thrown at her stick in the mind no less than the tentativeness with which she approaches the brothel for the first time, dressed in black, and ready to take flight at any moment. Couture by Yves Saint Laurent and lush photography drown us in luxurious chic. The stylish settings arouse our aesthetic senses, and the languorous pacing and emotional complexity keep us trying to figure it all out long before we realise just how difficult that is going to be.

Analysing it in Freudian or purely sexual terms is less than satisfying. The characters are convincing - the posh conservative elite, the matter-of-fact but certainly not coarse madame, the pervs who visit the brothel, and the psychologically conflicted Séverine through them all. It is hardly a plea for sexual liberation - the men, even one that Séverine takes a fancy to, are pretty lowlife. Their strange fantasy requirements mete out the most fascinating tableau of perversions but even more fascinating is what we don't see: such as what is in the box brought by the Chinaman. We are forced to identify with Séverine - she is the most normal character - and yet the most convincing way to approach the film is one suggested by Buñuel himself, as a parable attacking the decadence of the bourgeoisie.

On a more elevated level, it is a forceful artistic statement that viewers addicted to linear storytelling may find hard to accept. It seems to anticipate Eyes Wide Shut in its treatment of hidden sexuality, but cinematically it is more linked to the surreal Mulholland Drive. Buñuel's friend from University and at one point collaborator, Salvador Dali, could be similarly perplexing when it came to alternate realities. He said, "People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings." The mind is drawn to interpret a piece of art in a specific concrete way, but the artist may wish to express a concept that transcends specific examples. In Belle de Jour, Buñuel claims that there are not two endings, just one ambiguous ending. When you have finished watching the film it is not hard to decide which scenes are reality and which are fantasy, but when you run it through your mind again it is equally possible to make alterations. Do we want to know what is in the box, or do we love the mystery?

The name Belle de Jour can be read as a pun on 'lady of the night', since Séverine only worked in the day; everything becomes plain. This is maybe why it becomes her as her name at the brothel. But enter Séverine's feverish imagination and you might see something else.

"Belle de Jour" is generally considered to be director Luis Bunuel's masterpiece; a surprisingly revealing and seemingly personal venture into the world of eroticism and its deviances. It's a truly surrealistic exercise in ambiguity, fantasy, and reality. The line that separates them is blurred so much that the famously mysterious ending has had critics arguing for decades over its meaning.

The fantasy sequences are usually signalled by the sound of carriage bells, but by the end of the film the viewer is no longer able to differentiate between what is another one of Severine's fantasies and what is reality. Even Bunuel admitted to not knowing himself. He said that "by the end, the real and imaginary fuse; for me they form the same thing." The gorgeous Catherine Deneuve, resplendent in her icy prime, portrays Severine Sevigny, the middle-class wife of Pierre, a doctor. She is frigid, virginal, yet seemingly happy enough in her bourgeoisie life and its trappings. However, upon hearing about a local clandestine brothel from a friend, she pays a visit to the madame, and becomes a prostitute, going by the name of "Belle de Jour", as she can only work in the afternoons. She apparently fully realizes and enjoys her sexuality, despite her guilty conscience, exclaiming that she "can't help it". She certainly doesn't need the money. She's bored with her life and her marriage, needing a "firm hand" to lead her; a need which the madame, Anais, who is obviously attracted to her, almost immediately recognizes. Her sweet and conventional husband is unaware, treating her much like a child, and the audience cannot help but believe that even if he knew of her true nature, he would not understand or empathize. She keeps her two worlds neatly separate until a patron of hers (whom she herself enjoys) becomes obsessed with her, and all is threatened.

That Alfred Hithcock in particular admired this film comes as no surprise to me; Deneuve would have been the perfect Hitchcock heroine: an icy blonde who becomes "a whore in the bedroom", as Hitchock was fond of saying he preferred in his leading ladies. But this remark is not meant to simplify the story, its telling, or Deneuve's remarkable performance, which is what truly draws the viewer into the film.

"Belle de Jour" was Bunuel's first foray into the use of color, and he employed it to great effect. From the fall colors displayed in the landscape scenes, to the subtle shades in Deneuve's clothing, the contrasts are set. While the world around her explodes in glorious hues, Deneuve's character is defined by her couture, if staid, wardrobe of tan, black, and white.

"Belle de Jour" was unreleased for many years due to copyright problems, but finally re-released in 1995 through the efforts of director Martin Scorcese, and released on DVD in 2003. I've watched it twice in the past week and am still at a loss to describe it very well; suffice to say that I am in awe. It's an amazingly erotic film without any explicitness, and one that I expect hasn't lost any of its effect over the years. As the subject matter is handled very tactfully and without any actual sex scenes; a great deal is left to the viewer's imagination - which only serves the heighten the mysteries inherent at every turn in the film. The viewer is however drawn into the sense of feeling to be a voyeur into Severine's secret life; the careful choreography of scenes and camera angles contribute to the uncomfortable sense of intrusion by us, the viewers.

There are many sub-stories and small mysteries in the film; for instance one of the most widely debated upon by critics is the mystery of "what is in the Asian client's little box?" that he presents first to one prostitute, who quickly refuses, then to Severine, who tentatively agrees. All the audience know is that it's something with a insect-like noise, and when the client leaves, Severine is sprawled face-down upon the bed, the sheets thrown about, and obviously pleased with whatever took place in the interim.

"Belle de Jour" was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1967 Venice Film Festival, as well as the award for Best Foreign Film in 1968 from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Interesting side notes: Bunuel himself had a shoe fetish, which helps explain the numerous shots of Deneuve's beautifully clad feet throughout the film, and the fact that every time she goes shopping, she buys shoes. He also appears in the film in a cameo as a cafe patron, and in another scene his hands are shown loading a gun.

'Belle de Jour' is Buñuel at his weirdest: the Spanish master builds this movie on the relationship between the fantasy of conscious and unconscious dreams and reality. The dreamer is the beautiful Séverine (the magnificent Catherine Deneuve) a petite bourgeois woman trapped in a dull marriage which leads her to strive for something else, first in fantasy, and then in outright real life. Séverine's dreams are vividly sexual: the opening scene marks the tone of the movie and the character as she dreams with being raped, spanked and humiliated while her angered husband watches. Throughout the rest of the movie, Séverine will be trying to make these fantasies come true in a brothel she starts working at… or is she? This is what's fun in Buñuel's movie: it's impossible to tell fiction from fact.

Séverine is the heart and soul of 'Belle de Jour:' her journey through her own sexuality is riveting; she starts with as a repressed woman who's having marital problems, probably due to sex. As a way to get out of her dull life she starts working at a brothel during daytime, hence her nickname 'beautiful by day.' Some of the episodes at the brothel are funny: her first attempt at playing a dominatrix is an embarrassing experience for the poor Séverine who's not accustomed to the relationship between dominator/dominated; her experience with a creepy Asian client is highly enigmatic, mainly because of the famous and mysterious box the client brings… whatever it is, it seems to bring Séverine a lot of pleasure. Her she participates in a role-playing situation with a rich enigmatic man who asks her to perform a dead woman in a bizarre ritual/funeral scene… the level of insinuations this scene creates in one's mind is outstanding! Meanwhile, amidst all the pleasure, Séverine is haunted with a sense of guilt and shame as she keeps imagining herself being punished by her husband and his best friend. She ponders leaving the brothel until a new client, arrives and she's immediately attracted to him.

Pierre Cleménti was an outstanding revelation: although I had unknowingly seen him once before in Bertolucci's 'The Comformist' as the homosexual driver Lino, I certainly noticed him in this movie: he's a fascinating combination of style and substance with his amazing performance, playing the sophisticated, leather-wearing, cane-wielding, gold-toothed young criminal, Marcel, meeting Séverine when celebrating a successful bank heist. His obsession for her grows to fantastic proportions culminating in the unexpected tragedy of the third act. The end of the movie is perhaps the weirdest part of the narrative, the one where all interpretations become valid; it's also a great send-up on happy endings, and a fine conclusion to a thriller if this movie were a thriller… Buñuel is just genius!

"Belle de Jour" is a funny, tragic, and ultimately unique movie. I had the opportunity to watch it at a theatre room last year and obviously I felt the pleasure of seeing this bizarre masterpiece as all movies should be seen: on the big screen. I'll certainly feel the lack when I have to watch it on TV one day.