463. Belle de Jour (1967)

Running Time: 101 minutes
Directed By: Luis Bunuel
Written By: Luis Bunuel, Jean-Claude Carriere, from novel by Joseph Kessel
Main Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi
Click here to view the trailer

FANTASY OR REALITY?

Despite the fact that "Belle de Jour" wasn't scheduled to be one of the film's that I watched during this sixties filled 100, something about it caught my eye recently and I decided to slip it in. For the curious, the original plan was for me to do a week dedicated to Luis Bunuel, but because I can't find all of his films, I've decided to bust them up and watch them whenever.

In "Belle de Jour" Catherine Deneuve is Severine, a married, bourgeois housewife whom is quite frigid when it comes to her husband Pierre (Sorel) and their sex life (or lack thereof). However, even though Severine doesn't show any interest in building a sex life with her husband, she often fantasizes about different sexual exploits and fetishes. From the beginning, we get the sense that Severine seems to be very conflicted inside - on one hand she DOES love her husband, but doesn't wish to be sexually active with him and on the other hand she does have a very healthy sexual appetite, one that she is only feeding with fantasies. When Severine finds out that an old friend of hers has become a prostitute at a whorehouse, Severine seems intrigued. After talking with a friend of her husband's, Husson (Piccoli) and inadvertently getting the address of a local brothel, Severine goes for a visit and ends up with a day job. Severine agrees to work at the brothel weekdays, from 2pm until 5pm, when her husband (the doctor) is at work, in an effort to feed her sexual desires. She'll go by the name Belle de Jour when she's at the brothel, in an effort to conceal her private life and cleverly play off the time of day she's available. At first she's hesitant, but she soon slips into the job and becomes comfortable there. However, things become really complicated when her husband starts getting suspicious and one of her "johns" falls in love with her.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. I'll go on record in saying that "Belle de Jour" probably has one of the best opening scenes that I've ever witnessed. A horse drawn carriage rides closer to the screen and eventually reveals our main couple, Severine and Pierre. I won't spoil the rest here, but trust me it's probably the best hook you'll ever find in a movie and it's something that, once I saw it, I knew I was going to be in for a real treat with this movie. Let me put it another way: If the opening scene of this movie had played out and then all of a sudden the DVD copy of this movie had crapped out on me and stopped working, I would have been a very pissed off individual! Enough about the beginning, let's get into the meat & potatoes of the picture, shall we. To be honest, the film was a little hard for me to grasp onto. I had a hard time settling in and from start to finish, there seemed to be a real feeling of unease going on within me as I watched the afternoon exploits of Belle de Jour unfold. The whole world that these characters existed in, really reeked of something impure & unsettling. Perhaps it was the severe degree of sexual perversions that are examined throughout the film. At different times in the film, things like bondage, necrophilia, pedophilia, domination and humiliation fetishes are hinted at, and those are just some of the ones I picked up on.

SPOILER ALERT!

However, Bunuel isn't blatant when it comes to the sexual part of the movie. There is no nudity, sex is never shown and even the perversions that I mention above are never said outright, but only hinted at (sometimes more heavily hinted that others, but still). And, hey, don't get me wrong, this film isn't a piece of pornography (although in the 60s, I'm sure it was considered as such) and deals with much more than just sexual desires and urges. Bunuel also provides us with characters, most notably Severine, a woman who is conflicted inside because she has urges that she can't succumb to. Perhaps Severine's desires are so extreme that she knows that Pierre will never be able to satisfy her and so that she won't shame him, she just decides to tell him that she's not ready. Perhaps in her mind, the idea of a conventional sex life between a man and wife just isn't taboo enough, but to fit in with society she decided to marry a doctor and live a good life, in a nice home, where she'll shop and welcome guests. Perhaps all the shopping, welcoming guests and day to day life of a doctor's wife has made her feel like she's living a watered down lifestyle and perhaps Severine needs to have a secret, hole in the wall place where she goes to do unspeakable deeds.

There's one thing to say for this film and that's that it makes you think. It also made me realize the obsession that people have with unlocking certain movies, trying their best to get the answers and be told how they were supposed to interpret art. Whatever happened to just sitting back and watching? Just letting things BE and letting movies unfold before your eyes. If you get ideas or interpretations, fine, explore them. If you don't form any ideas, but still find yourself drawn to the movie and intrigued by it, then just let it BE. I wanted answers when this film ended, but I felt more content to just mull it over on my own and let it seep in. Sure, the liens between fantasy and reality are a bit blurred in "Belle de Jour", but I think if you pay attention, it's not a hard movie to unlock. When there is fantasy we hear the jingle bells of a horse drawn carriage (how fitting so close to Christmas). The ending is ambiguous, but there is one idea that I thought was really clever...

The character of Husson is portrayed throughout the film as kind of a sleazy guy, or at least that's how I saw him. In the end, he arrives at the home of Severine and Pierre and tells Severine that he's prepared to tell Pierre everything about her "day job". He rationalizes his idea by telling Severine that if Pierre knows everything then he won't feel guilty about being a paralyzed man, condemning his "pure" wife to a lifetime of taking care of him. He'll know the truth and then his guilt will be eased. Husson enters the room where Pierre sits, but we never find out if he actually tells or not. I think he definitely tells Pierre, no question about it. By telling Pierre, he not only fulfills his own idea, but he also guarantees that Severine will never leave Pierre and that he WILL always have a caretaker. Think about it, we're dealing with a woman who had overwhelming sexual desires, so overwhelming that she took a day job at a whorehouse and hid the truth from her husband. She didn't leave her husband, nor did she ever even tinker with the idea of leaving him and simply becoming a full-time whore. She, in my mind, DOES, sincerely love Pierre. The guilt that she'll feel if she leaves a man, who knows she was unfaithful to him, would be unbearable to her. So, in the end, Husson actually does them both a favor: He ensures that Pierre will always have Severine to take care of him and feel guiltless about it and he makes it impossible for Severine to finally, fully succumb to her sexual temptation and leave the man she loves. That's my interpretation anyway. It's not right or wrong, it's simply how the story goes in my head. Oh yeah and the end is a fantasy and also a bit of a sign that Severine will, from there on, be forced to live in a fantasy world when it comes to personal excitement.

RATING: 8/10 I didn't really grasp it enough to go all the way, but it intrigued me enough to get, at least, an '8'. I actually did a lot of my grasping on this one as I was writing, so what you read above is a man trying to understand a movie.

MOVIES WATCHED: 372
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 629

December 20, 2011 2:06am