Our take
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.
Streaming arrival
What it won
Cannes
1 nom
Venice
2 wins
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.
The details
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
