What makes something sexy? Belle de Jour doesn’t have any definite answers, nor does it present a straightforward narrative, especially with the way it slides in and out of the titular beauty’s fantasies and her reality. Still, the way director Luis Buñuel directs this film adaptation clearly holds an understanding of what makes something erotic. The masochism of Catherine Deneuve’s Séverine might be understood by today’s more sexually liberated audiences, but the rest of her desires and the images deliberately left out could easily baffle viewers or maybe even trigger the same feeling a bored, rich housewife would get. Belle de Jour understands something that can’t be easily put to words, and it’s this understanding that made this psychological drama a surrealist classic.
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.
Cannes
1 nomination
Venice
2 wins
