Belle de Jour

Catherine Deneuve plays a beautiful young woman married to a rich young surgeon (Jean Sorel). Their life is a material success but the wife’s frigidity is a strain on the marriage. Plagued by masochistic sexual fantasies, she takes a part-time job in a brothel, hoping that by playing the part of Belle de Jour, the high class prostitute, she can overcome her dislike for sex. This is a savagely funny, and often a very cruel film, as it pulls apart the consumerist psyche of a bourgeois woman to reveal her as souless and empty of life. Stripped of her clothes, her jewellery, her status, she is a no-one. It is only as Belle de Jour that she can emotionally experience life. The movie moves back and forth from the casual filmwork of the brothel scenes to the surrealist dream sequences where Belle de Jour recieves the punishments she feels she deserves. Though often criticised as a misogynist film, it is not women who are the target of Bunuel’s satire, but the pretensions of wealth and status. Nor is the sexuality of men sacred for Bunuel as some of the funniest sequences deal with the absurdities of masculine desire. Co-starring Michel Piccoli and Genevieve Page. Based on the novel by Jospeh Kessel.