Belle de Jour.

I just watched the Bunuel directed, Catherine Deneuve pic, and I'm still trying to digest it. SPOILER ALERT: So I think we all know the gist- sexually-repressed bourgeouse woman is married to her rich doctor-husband, but refuses to sleep with him. Her idle days fill her with provocative fantasies, and eventually, when she finds out a mutual friend is working in an upscale brothel, decides to try it herself. At first she is disturbed by it, but eventually she can't stay away and has one customer who is obsessed with her, Marcel, who is some kind of cheap crook. Well, the male friend who told her about this particular brothel in the first place, off-hand, eventually goes there himself, and sees that the supposed virtuous wife is playing whore while the husband is at work. She begs him not to say anything, and she quits that very day. But when she walks home, she finds that Marcel, her dangerous, criminal lover has followed her to her residence and comes in, saying he will refuse to budge until she agrees to meet him for more rendez-vous. She begs him to leave because her husband will be home soon, and so he eventually does, realizing that the thing keeping them apart is this "husband" character. So he waits in a car outside, and shoots hubby, before driving off hurriedly, and eventually getting shot by a cop. After this, her husband is (obviously) ill: blind and wheelchair bound from the shooting. Her strange obsessions end momentarily, as she is playing nurse to her husband. But then the friend who had discovered her in the brothel decides that the husband must know the truth. After he is told, she rejoins her husband, and once again drifts off into a fantasy land, where her husband is back to normal, and it is as though nothing had ever happened, the End, etc.


I suppose part of it is showing that the idle life of the wealthy woman is drab and unpleasant, and being raised in some sort of virtuous bubble is not healthy. However, I find it rather offensive that the family friend thinks it's any of his damn business to tell the husband about her activities, when he is using the brothel services himself, and is also married. Double standard much? We can probably all agree that you can't escape your past, especially when it involves prostitution; also, that no one in 60s knows much about female sexuality. Not that much has changed. I think I need some more time to think it over. Of course, it was gorgeous, Bunuel is amazing, etc.


Now some pictures!!!


"You totally wouldn't get it, housemaid. Sexual fulfillment at the hands of a stranger is WILD!"




"This is my chaste-on-the-outside, wild-on-the-inside look."




After hubby got shot, this is the repentant Catholic guilt look.



This was her kinda hot lover who eventually shot her hubby. Things preventing him from being hotter: pimp wear, including cane, tendency towards violence over nothing, and having creepy silver fake-teeth, because apparently his got knocked out.



Apparently all Catherine Deneuve's stuff was designed by Yves Saint-Laurent. I loved her look when she was wearing a tennis outfit, but of course, no one has that look uploaded on the internet. It was kind of "Parapluies de Cherbourg" esque with all the trenches and simple A-line dresses, though a little more grown-up and less pastels.


Overall, I loved it, but that can be said of most foreign films from the 60s.