Belle de Jour movie review- I too want to step on men and have them pay me

 Gonna go rethink my whole entire existence now. 

Director: Luis Bunuel 

Writer: Luis Bunuel, Jean-Claude Carriere, Joseph Kessel

Cinematographer: Sacha Vierny

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Pierre Clementi

Year: 1967

A beautiful Parisian upper-class young housewife, Severine (the enigmatic Catherine Deneuve) is completely enslaved by her masochistic sexual fantasies and desires whilst also trying to balance her normal everyday life alongside her loving doctor of a husband, Pierre (the amazing Jean Sorel). But his wife has lost the desire to have sex with him and instead spends her time daydreaming of needing to be both dominated and humiliated. When their friend Henri (the wonderful Michel Piccoli) mentions a secretive high-class brothel which Severine begins to work at during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows controlling and possessive, Severine must try to go back to her normal life as her secret persona begins to bleed into her personal life. 

This is the first foreign-language film that I have ever reviewed on my blog, and this is the first Bunuel film I have ever watched! Woop Woop!!

Belle de Jour = literally means morning glory...

When I first watched Belle de Jour I found myself distracted and hypnotised by its divine and gently hazy, dreamy and soft pastel-coloured cinematography that just entices you into Bunuel's world, like a sort of fever dream with every boundary being permeable. Someone, please print this whole entire movie out so I can wallpaper my bedroom with it! I want to eat this film, it's so sexy! Belle de Jour carries such an erotic subject whilst still being entertaining and without having to show any nudity. I mean, that's an accomplishment, and so is Catherine Deneuve's hair which deserves an oscar for its performance; that was poetic cinema right there. Belle de Jour is the most stylish film from the 60s. I mean, Severine was serving look after look! Every time she turned up in a new outfit, I was absolutely floored! Seriously I need all of her outfits this instant. The fact that she's just running around in Yves Saint Laurent customized clothes, that's it; that's my aesthetic!!  Even though Belle de Jour's synopsis seems straightforward, I really did set myself up for a hard time, having to try and focus on quite a complex and ambiguous storyline whilst also having to read subtitles (because, sadly, I still haven't learnt French!), I was just asking to be absolutely bewildered by the time the film credits began. Luis Bunuel, you're insane. Whilst it is not the most overt in its surreality, Bunuel does blur the lines between reality and fantasy as if it was day bleeding into night. However, by the end of my first viewing, I came to believe that Belle de Jour was solely just an investigation into twisted female sexuality and repression whilst also taking a thorough look into male desire and destruction through the force of patriarchal and societal oppression. However, by my second viewing of the film, it seems to just open itself up, and I came to realise that this erotic, psychosexual thriller attaches itself also to the themes of bourgeois entrapment as Bunuel's surrealism and Madonna-whore complex ensues throughout the repressed desires of his characters through dream sequences and what could be categorized as "reality". Belle de Jour is immensely captivating and fascinating, as life seems to be but an extended S&M sexual fantasy. Imagine if all sex work was this glamorous and fulfilling; the economy would collapse. Me, knowing I'll never be a French housewife in the 60s who works at a brothel whilst her husband is at work: wow, she is literally me! #relatable #the feminine urge to be a whore. In the end, girls don't want a boyfriend; they want Catherine Deneuve. Also, rich people just seem to be really kinky in this film when we all know that like Jeff Bezos would be vanilla as fuck in the bedroom. Belle de Jour blew me away with an ending that leaves you absolutely fucked up; I'm over here having an identity crisis as we speak. Bitches be like: "I was born in the wrong era" I am bitches because I want to walk around Paris in cute little 60s outfits and play tennis in a fancy French country club whilst also having an affair with an attractive gangster. I mean, Severine is the girlboss I aspire to be; good for her! I support women's rights and women's wrongs. I love it when women just do whatever they want without having to explain why to anyone. Belle de Jour is going to have me in a chokehold for a while. Hot girl summer vibes. I relate way too much to 60s upper-class French women...

Catherine Deneuve's performance was also just absolutely breathtaking. From Repulsion to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this has got to be one of her best performances that I've seen so far! Incredibly nuanced as an "innocent" woman plays with the fine line between love and intimacy, lust and carnal pleasure as an escape or means. It's just so elegantly overwhelming. The final 30 minutes of Belle de Jour really are just a masterful and wonderful part of cinema, as you as a spectator have to come to terms with the question: is Severine a sympathetic character or not? I'm also praying for her skin after sleeping and showering in a full face of makeup; get it, girl, I guess. Pierre Clementi, as Marcel needs to stay back, a tall skinny French man with a nicotine addiction who wears a leather jacket and rings and owns a cane; I can't afford to have another fictional crush; I'll go insane!! I'm obsessed. God, I'd risk it all for any troubled murderous skinny white man. Yes, he's insane, and yes, I need him. I want to aggressively make out with him whilst a Lana Del Rey song is playing. I just wish he'd been a looming figure throughout the film; Bunuel's rushed relationship formed between the two of them could have benefitted from an earlier introduction and some sort of character explanation, as he's just plopped into the film and then pretty much steals every single scene he's in to try and make up for the lack of time he has. I still can't get over that this was made in 1967! Belle de Jour is beautifully shot; at times, the acting and some scenes can seem silly at times, in a good way, but I'm not sure that it's the way Bunuel wanted the audience to react. Belle de Jour also really reminds me of Eyes Wide Shut, Nicole Kidman should have just shown Tom this film, and the entire trajectory of that film could have been avoided. It's official, Bunuel was the horniest director to have ever walked the earth. But we can't forget that the best chemistry in this entire film was between Severine and Madame Anais. What Belle de Jour does so perfectly is that it highlights a world with reality, as surreal dream sequences peel themselves back like the brothels curtains; every single detail is visually astounding. Belle de Jour begins with a dream and ends with you wondering whether it's real or not.  

Belle de Jour is perhaps the most beguiling film I've seen in a long time, a tale of irresistible dark fantasies that sees Catherine Deneuve's enigmatic daylily deflowered. I'm just absolutely in love with the sluttification of Severine throughout this film. Belle de Jour is timelessly entrancing and beautiful, but I just couldn't stop thinking about how marcel is basically just the 60s French version of Rodrick Heffley. Belle de Jour no; Belle de Whore yes. 

Rating: 4.5/5

Favourite quotes: 

"Male egos require constant stroking. Every task is an achievement, every success epic. That is why women cook, but men are chefs; we make cheese on toast, they produce pain de fromage."

"Same old story with men." 

"Husband? never met a man good enough for that."

"Sometimes I wonder if I met everyone in my life in the wrong order."