Rent Belle De Jour (1967)

Whose fantasy?? - Belle De Jour review by Kurtz

This was Luis Bunuel’s biggest commercial success, and it is still a highly regarded movie today- an eminent film historian provides the talk-track as one of the extras on the DVD. It is undeniably stylish and succeeds in creating a powerfully erotic atmosphere without actually revealing very much bare flesh- there are a few shots of Catherine Deneuve in her faintly scary sixties lingerie, but most of the frisson comes from the internal fantasy sequences where she imagines a life far removed the rather chaste and sterile world she inhabits with her husband. It was these sequences that Bunuel invented, grafting them on to material from the original novel to explain how Deneuve’s upper-middle class Severine ends up working in a brothel. Bunuel’s assistants tell in interviews how they did extensive research into female sexual fantasy (tough job, but someone’s got to do it!), but I’m unconvinced about how many women would actually get that hot under the bodice about being pelted with cow dung and whipped and ravished by randy coachmen. Maybe it was more a question of male fantasy, Sr. Bunuel? Throughout it all, though, Deneuve’s icy, mask-like impassivity reveals nothing either way.

Disappointing - Belle De Jour review by CP Customer

I missed this one 40 years ago and wish I had again. It might have been good once but it looks tired and fake in 2010. The acting is wooden (even Deneuve) and the direction rigid. I saw no "erotic masterpiece", no "collision between fantasy and reality" (they are nearly indistiguishably drear) and no "depravity" (even by the emerging standards of 1967).

Have I missed the point? I don't think so. It claims to be one of the first cinematic explorations of female sexual fantasies and I guess is intentionally dispassionate, but sexual fantasies are about biology, psychology and above all else, feelings - none of which are portrayed here.