Belle de Jour is about Severine (Catherine Deneuve), a respectable housewife in Paris who spends her afternoons working as a high-class prostitute because of her unfulfilled masochistic desires.
Bunuel belongs to the rare class of directors who move effortlessly between reality and the world of dream and fantasy. The film is erotic, so erotic, because he knows very well that sex is not only about the sexual act, but also about desires and the imagination. Neither celebrating nor condemning Severine’s choices and actions, Bunuel presents Severine as she is, delving into her world of wild fantasies and fetishes. At the same time, there is hardly any explicit sex, much of the eroticism is suggestive, thus leaving the audience to their own imagination, especially in the sequence of the Japanese man and his mysterious box.
The 1st time I watched the film was in/before 2013. Now, watching it again, I have become more familiar with Luis Bunuel’s work, and also changed as a person, Belle de Jour becomes much better, and more meaningful on a personal level.
Here is an interesting video essay about Bunuel’s fetishism.
Luis Buñuel: FETISHIST from Cole Smithey on Vimeo.
If this doesn’t make you want to check out Bunuel, I don’t know what would.
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