Belle de jour (Buñuel, 1967)

Last updated on: January 4, 2015 at 8:24 pm by Sarah Boslaugh

Belle de jour (Buñuel, 1967) 2015-01-04T20:24:22-05:00 Sarah Boslaugh

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Catherine Deneuve

The first thing you see in Belle de jour is a long stretch of rural road in a French country scene so impossibly picturesque it seems to belong in an art museum. A horse-drawn carriage approaches the camera slowly and eventually we see two uniformed coachmen driving while in the back the attractive and well-off couple Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) and Pierre Serizy (Jean Sorel) exchange sweet nothings. There’s no soundtrack, just diegetic sound including horses’ hooves and harness bells, sounds which will return during the film to signal shifts in Séverine’s psychological state.

This idyllic picture is shattered as the carriage comes to a stop and Pierre and the coachmen force Séverine out of the carriage. She is dragged across the forest, gagged, bound and stripped to the waist, after which the coachmen begin beating her with whips while Pierre looks on, smoking a cigarette. One of the coachmen takes off his coat and begins fondling Séverine (who somewhat surprisingly has a look of contentment on her face)—and then director Luis Buñuel cuts to an absolutely non-threatening Pierre in the bathroom of the couple’s comfortable Paris apartment, preparing to join Séverine in the couple’s bedroom. Only then do we realize that the opening scene was been a dream, or a daydream, which took place only in Séverine’s mind.

Buñuel will mislead us in a similar manner several more times over the course of the film. He deliberately avoids giving any sign to indicate the difference between a dream sequence and action in the shared world of the characters, allowing him to surprise us again and again. The film also includes several flashbacks which I believe are supposed to be depictions of real events but they could also be true in the sense that our memories our true to us (even if they never happened) or they could be purely imaginary.

Belle de jour is often described as a film about a middle-class housewife (Deneuve) who voluntarily becomes a prostitute, but that’s only true on a superficial level: the film’s true subject is the erotic power of the imagination as well as Buñuel’s favorite topic, the decadence and ridiculousness of the bourgeoisie. Power and role reversals are also a theme: certainly France was a man’s world, legally and financially, in 1967, but the female characters are running the show in this film while the men are frequently portrayed as clueless children.

We learn in the opening scenes that Séverine and Pierre do not have a sexually-functioning marriage: they sleep in separate beds and Pierre is obviously frustrated by the arrangement but it also pleases him to treat his wife as a virginal child. Séverine is also frustrated, but doesn’t know quite why. Unlike Pierre, however, she is motivated to seek an answer, which she finds after she begins working afternoons at a Paris brothel run by Madame Anais (Genevieve Page). Séverine she uses the pseudonym “Belle du jour” (“beauty of the day” or “day lily”) because she is insistent that she must leave by five o’clock every day to keep her husband from finding out what she is doing. She experiences a variety of customers but the one which will become crucial to the film’s denouement is a young gangster named Marcel (Pierre Clementi) who becomes obsessed with her and observes no boundaries in that obsession.

It would be a mistake to interpret Belle de jour entirely as a realistic film: it’s really more of a puzzle where you need to figure out when to interpret the action as realistic, when as symbolic, and how to put the two together. The dialogue is frequently stylized, as is the action and cinematography, and the characters’ clothing and surroundings underline both their emotional states and their class status. This makes Belle de jour a rich experience which retains its interest over repeated viewings. Just in case you were wondering, despite much of the action taking place in a brothel there’s no explicit sex in Belle de jour, and the film is stronger for it. After all, just about anyone old enough to be interested in this film already knows how it works: it’s everything other than the physical process which interests Buñuel.

Belle de jour was originally released in 1967 and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival that year. The Miramax DVD includes an informative commentary track by film scholar Julie Jones, the original U.S. theatrical trailer and the 1995 re-release trailer. Interestingly, both trailers include a cheesy soundtrack (the film itself has none) and (less surprisingly) play up the titillation factor. The soundtrack is available in the original French and in a badly dubbed English version with optional English subtitles and English captions for the hearing impaired (the latter tells you about nonverbal sounds like “bells jingling”).

Sarah Boslaugh is a freelance writer and editor as well as an instructor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She has four books in print (the most popular is Statistics in a Nutshell, published by O’Reilly) and is a regular contributor to playbackstl.com and popmatters.com.

Reviews

Belle de jour

Luis Buñuel

Previous Post

March 11, 2010

Hot Tub Time Machine (Pink, 2010)

Next Post

April 9, 2010 Chico Colvard Interview

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Years Later 1999 Top 5 2007 Top 10 2008 Favorite Discoveries 2008 Top 10 2009 Favorite Discoveries 2009 Top 10 2010 Favorite Discoveries 2010 Top 10 2011 Top 10 2012 Top Ten 2013 Top Ten 2014 Top Ten Best Picture Winners Christian Spotlight on Entertainment Christianity Today Coming Soon Disclosure Disclosure--AS Disclosure--Book Disclosure--DVDS Disclosure--SEOL Disclosure--Travel Dissenting Opinion Elsewhere Emergenetics Essays Featured Film Fest DC--2014 Film Festivals Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 Headline Interviews Laura on the Oscar Winners Podcasts Quick Impressions Reviews RiverRun Film Festival 2014 Television The Criterion Collection The Thin Place To Stream or Not to Stream? Top 10s and Other Lists Toronto International Film Festival 2009 Toronto International Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Toronto International Film Festival 2013 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Uncategorized Video Virginia Film Festival 2011 Virginia Film Festival 2013 Women's Film Festival 2012

Select a Month February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the Bible say about rest?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Rest is evil Only rest when you're old Avoid rest God rested on the seventh day