Belle de Jour [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel

Overview

Belle de Jour dramatizes the collision between depravity and elegance, one of the favorite themes of director Luis Buñuel. Catherine Deneuve stars as a wealthy but bored newlywed, eager to taste life to the fullest. She seemingly gets her wish early in the film when she is kidnapped, tied to a tree, and whipped. It turns out that this is only a daydream, but her subsequent visits to a neighboring brothel, where she offers her services, certainly seem to be real. This illusion
eality dichotomy extends to the final scenes, in which we are offered two possible endings. Thanks to a question of copyright and ownership, Belle de Jour disappeared from view shortly after its 1967 release, not even resurfacing on videotape. When it was reissued theatrically in 1994, many critics placed the perplexing but mesmerizing film on their lists of that year's best films.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/17/2012
UPC:	0715515088817
Original Release:	1967
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:40:00
Sales rank:	9,474

Special Features

Audio commentary featuring Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book Belle de Jour; New video piece featuring writer and sexual-politics activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda Williams; New interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière; Segment from the French television program Catherine Deneuve; Original and rerelease trailer; A booklet featuring an essay by critic Melissa Anderson and a 1970s interview with director Luis Buñel

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Catherine Deneuve	Séverine Serizy/Belle de Jour
Jean Sorel	Pierre Sérizy
Michel Piccoli	Henri Husson
Geneviève Page	Madame Anais,Actor
Pierre Clémenti	Marcel(as Pierre Clementi)
Françoise Fabian	Charlotte
Macha Meril	Renee(as Macha Meril)
Muni	Pallas
Maria Latour	Mathilde
Claude Cerval	Le chauffeur
Michel Charrel	Footman
Iska Khan	Asian Client
Bernard Musson	Majordomo
Marcel Charvey	Prof. Henri
François Maistre	L'enseignant
Francisco Rabal	Hyppolite
Georges Marchal	Duke
Francis Blanche	Monsieur Adolphe
Adélaïde Blasquez	Maid
Bernard Fresson	Le Grêle
Dominique Dandrieux	Severine as a child
Marc Eyraud	Barman
Brigitte Parmentier	Severine as a child

Technical Credits

Luis Buñuel

Jean-Claude Carrière

Luis Buñuel	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Raymond Hakim	Producer,Producer
Jean-Claude Carrière	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

The world's oldest profession turns out to be a cure for the newlywed blues in Belle de Jour, a razor-sharp French-language satire from Spanish-born director Luis Buñuel. Catherine Deneuve plays the young married woman drawn irresistibly toward a secret life of prostitution, and both the actress and her character slip easily into the role, evoking the bored distraction of an unfulfilled young woman as she comes to grips with her more primal cravings. Buñuel plays to his own strong suit here: He exhibits undeniable mastery in portraying the tension between prim and proper surfaces and the powerful, irrational -- even perverse -- appetites that lurk beneath. But despite the sexy subject matter, Belle de Jour is far from steamy; rather, Buñuel's sensibility remains typically dry and detached. Moments of the director's signature surreal fantasy are worked into the story nicely, but when compared to a film like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the satire of Belle de Jour is far more restrained, the film's brilliantly enigmatic ending notwithstanding. The result is a marvelously adroit comedy of manners that is one of Buñuel's best works.

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

Director Luis Buñuel's first film in color, Belle de Jour also kicked off the last phase of his great career, which produced some of his most popular films (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire). Catherine Deneuve serves Buñuel here as Grace Kelly did Alfred Hitchcock, as the glacially beautiful blonde who is barely concealing smoldering desires. Séverine, Deneuve's character, finds that marriage is not the beginning of contentment, but a key which unlocks the doors of her abusive past to allow her imagination to run unfettered. How many of the film's events are "real" is left up to the viewer; Buñuel clearly wants to blur the distinctions between Séverine's erotic dreams and her attempts to fulfill them. A lesser filmmaker would wallow in the prurience of the story of a sexually frustrated wife turning to prostitution; for Buñuel, however, making films about sex is about exploring much more than human desire and physical contact. What makes his approach unique is its playfulness; he can have it both ways, provoking the audience one moment and winking the next, as if to say, "This thing we call life, it's a big joke, isn't it?"

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener