Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Belle de Jour

A beautiful upper class housewife (Catherine Deneuve) takes no satisfaction in her perfectly eligible doctor husband and often drifts into bizarre masochistic daydreams. One day she stumbles into a bordello and, after some cajoling from the madame, decides to spend her afternoons as a prostitute while her husband is away at work. Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour is a bold tour de force, shot in sumptuous technicolor, that features a continuous succession of masterful vignettes, both real and imagined, that all add up to one unique, extraordinary whole. Deneuve, who was at the peak of her unsurpassed beauty, delivers a daring and commanding performance.