You’re in a room debasing yourself, embracing your wild, animal nature and your behavior is completely out of your control. And somehow, you can’t bring yourself to leave, no matter how much it all hurts.
That plot synopsis usually describes Luis Bunuel’s masterpiece “The Exterminating Angel,” but it also fits one of his later gems, “Belle de Jour.” In it, a woman named Severine (Catherine Deneuve) finds herself taking a job at a brothel and assuming the name Belle de Jour after finally being fed up with her unexciting marriage. It is one of the sexiest, yet also most curious and thought provoking movies about sex, romance, fetishes and everything in between. Those nuances within “Belle de Jour” are what make it such a classic; lots of movies have played on the outliers of love, but Bunuel digs deep into that unheard of middle ground.
The film’s curiosity builds from the first scene, in which Severine imagines a carriage ride in the forest with her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). Once out of earshot of their mansion, Pierre strips off her clothes and orders the drivers to whip her naked back, then rape her. It’s that masochistic urge that moves her, despite her reluctance, to the brothel. Only under pressure and stress can she perform, despite knowing how much it hurts.
But you’ll find that “Belle de Jour” has much more class than its subject matter gives it credit for. There’s a curious scene in which a patron comes in and seeks role play from Severine. Confused and unable to satisfy his demands, we see that he’s really the masochist, and that her fetishes are much more complex and perplexing.
Bunuel blends dream sequences and reality with a twinge of ambiguity. There’s one moment in which Severine dreams she’s out in the desert wearing a flowing white dress when her husband and her husband’s sleazy friend (Michel Piccoli) hurl mud at her. It’s too random and bizarre to be anything but a dream, but then Bunuel stages them straight, without other cinematic flourishes. It allows him later to trick us with a series of other tells and unexplained fetishes. One particularly jarring scene finds Severine back at the mansion from the movie’s opening scene. The wealthy estate owner requests that she cloak herself in ghost-pale robes and rest motionless in a shrine as he admires.
It’s that peculiar quality about Bunuel in which he can stage the most surreal oddity you’ve ever seen on film, and yet he can do so with the utmost clarity and not a hint of pretension. Seeing him dive slightly into the mainstream in this way with a provocative film about sex and perversions would prepare him for his Oscar friendly social commentary film “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeouise.”
But like the somewhat split personalities of “Belle de Jour’s” title character, one the uptight, frigid housewife with her hair in a tight bun, the other the fragile and loose call girl with her hair flowing, has two distinct feelings. It has the surreal, psychological study of a French New Wave film and the sexy style of, well a French New Wave film. It’s two movies, but one captivating, alluring whole.