Rating: 4.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 41/52 | Starring Catherine Deneuve
Séverine Serizy and her husband, Dr. Pierre Serizy, ride arm-in-arm in the back of a horse-driven carriage. The two love one another, but Pierre thinks Séverine is frigid. When the carriage reaches a place with sufficient covering, Pierre demands the carriage stop and Séverine get out. When she resists, the carriage drivers assist in pulling her out, taking her to the woods, where they bound her mouth, tie her up, and rip open her dress. The cabbies whip her with the horse whips before Pierre allows them to have their way with her.
Séverine comes to when Pierre asks what’s on her mind. She relays that she was thinking about the two of them on a carriage ride— a now-familiar daydream to Pierre, even if he doesn’t know the specifics. Pierre attempts to climb into bed with Séverine, but she asks him not to, sending him to his bed. The following day, the two take a skip trip with friends Henri and Renée for their one-year wedding anniversary. Séverine likes Renée but despises the way Henri looks at her. While riding in a cab, Renée tells Séverine about their friend Henriette, who now does sex work at a brothel. The idea won’t leave Séverine’s head.
Back at the house, Herni has left flowers for Séverine. She accidentally drops the vase, breaking it. In the bathroom, she accidentally knocks over a bottle of perfume. She recalls a childhood memory of a man sitting her on his lap and running his fingers up her body. At the tennis courts, she is still distant and distracted. She sees Henriette leave, and Henri waxes poetic about his wonderful memories at a specific brothel, giving her the address. He makes more advances on Séverine, who rejects them. But the address stays with her. She is reluctant to enter the place but does so anyway. On the way up, she recalls taking the communion but refusing to let the priest put the wafer in her mouth.
The film follows Séverine as she works at the brothel, setting a strict schedule to avoid her husband’s knowledge and taking on the name Belle de Jour. Perhaps there, she can exercise her silent fantasies or exorcise her repressed memories.
The film is based on a novel of the same name. Buñuel did not choose the project but came to it under a contract with the Hakim brothers. He didn’t like the book, so he did what he could to make the story his own. Also, he didn’t like the choice of Catherine Deneuve, who was only twenty-two at the time.
Deneuve finished the project feeling used and unhappy as Buñuel demanded more of her than she wished. Still, the role became one of her most iconic. The film solidified an archetype the actress first explored in Replusion as a blank slate for men to project their fantasies and perversions. Henri projects innocence and virtue onto her, which seeds his desire for her. Pierre sees an unbearable distance between them, even as Séverine’s love for him grows. Marcel, one of the clients, sees her as something to possess and control, something stable in his otherwise unstable life.
The audience may see her as yet another bored housewife occupying so many of these stories. We may think we understand why Séverine works at the brothel—we can use the images of her childhood, the fantasies we’re allowed to see, and we can draw up something about trauma, sex vs. love, etc. But not even Séverine knows why she is there. All she knows is that she is drawn to it and cannot escape it.
The film does make explicit its themes surrounding fantasy and reality. The brothel becomes a place where fantasy can leave the mind and still not impose on the perceived perfection of Séverine’s reality. But we also see it in the lives of others. In one scene, the daughter of the brothel’s housemaid comes in to see her mother, and a brothel client believes she works there. The housemaid, Pallas, swiftly directs her daughter upstairs to their apartment. All women, no matter their age, become sexual objects within the confines of the brothel.
Of all the Buñuel movies I’ve seen, this one has the most coherent plot and structure. The surrealism mostly occurs during the fantasy sequences, where Séverine dreams of new ways of being demeaned and dominated. These sequences aren’t straightforward, especially as the film progresses, and are open to several interpretations. Also, everyone just throws stuff on the floor—glasses, cigarettes, and so on—and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone.
What helps this movie stand out most is its final twenty minutes, which brilliantly bring everything together and, depending on how you read it, could upturn your interpretation of the movie as a whole.