BELLE DE JOUR — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Luis Buñuel's study of BDSM eroticism features Catherine Deneuve as the wife of a wealthy doctor who begins spending her afternoons working in a high-class French brothel catering to the unique kinks of its international clientele.

Catherine Deneuve’s upper-class ice queen Severine has fetishistic day dreams that arrive with a sound cue of sleigh bells to signal surreal undercurrents in BDSM acts that include her being bound and whipped by her husband’s horsemen while her handsome mate watches.

Sexual imagination runs wild.

Luis Buñuel conveys a tangible filmic interpretation of perverse sensual desires wrapped up in social taboos. Voyeurism plays a significant role in Buñuel’s depiction of Severine’s untamed desires that percolate beneath her frigid façade. 

Outrageous and yet anchored in sensual desire and erotic fantasy, “Belle de Jour” is a fascinating cinematic achievement that dares to connect Deneuve’s porcelain beauty to a world of bourgeois rebellion.

Here is a sublime picture filled with surprise, nuance, and a narcotic dose of Catherine Deneuve putting her exotic beauty in the service of surrealism's most provocative filmmaker. 

Restrained and beautifully conceived, Buñuel’s representation of sadomasochistic desires achieves something few films ever do, truth. 

Not Rated. 101 mins.