Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

framptonhollis One description of 'Belle de jour' that I read described the film, at some point, as being like a daydream. Nothing could be closer to the truth. Bunuel, Bunuel, Bunuel! One of cinema's all time greats, and a personal favorite filmmaker of mine for a few years now! 'Belle de jour' may be his greatest masterpiece, although I personally do prefer the likes of 'L'age d'Or', 'Viridiana', and 'Simon of the Desert', I feel like 'Belle de jour' can certainly be considered the most genuinely high quality film in his prolific and more than impressive cinematic oeuvre. It contains many of the elements that make Bunuel such a beloved and brilliant artist; the humor is there, the tragedy/drama is there, the strange sexual content is there, and the classic sense of surrealism all his greatest films have utilized so wonderfully is perfected here. This is Bunuel at the top of his game, blurring the already-blurry lines between cinematic fantasy and cinematic reality, playing w/flashbacks and dream sequences and never keeping absurdity out of the question no matter the setting or situation. And sexuality is portrayed with as much confusion and wild surrealist hijinks as is necessary when attempting to explore such a mess of a topic. Few filmmakers (or artists, whether they be authors or painters or whatever, for that matter) can depict sexuality quite like Bunuel can. 'Belle de jour' harkens back to Bunuel's much earlier masterpiece, 'L'age d'Or', which depicted sex w/a raging sort of surrealist accuracy that struck something in people, turning them angrily against him and his work, making them set fires to some cinemas in which it played, banning his obscene and blasphemous black comedy of horrors, and 'Belle de jour' may strike a similar emotional reaction to those of a more archaic sensibility, and the same energy said archaic-types may muster up in response may be utilized by film lovers across the globe to tear their hearts out in gripping love and admiration for Bunuel and this fantastical film!

disinterested_spectator A woman is frigid and won't have sex with her husband, probably because she was molested as a child. So she goes to a psychiatrist to get help, right? Wrong! She decides to go to work in a whorehouse, where turning a few tricks in the afternoon is just the therapy she needs, especially since all her customers are kinky and twisted. Of course, their perversions are only artificial movie perversions, not the sort of thing a prostitute would be likely to encounter on a daily basis in real life.Her husband still doesn't get any sex, though, because that just is not the way she loves him. One of her jealous customers shoots her husband anyway, leaving him mute, blind, crippled, and incapable of having sex. Now she has the perfect husband. But not for long. A friend of the family decides her husband will feel as though he is a burden on his virtuous wife, so he tells him that she is a prostitute. That way he won't feel so guilty.But wait. It was all just a dream. Fooled you.

ma-cortes This is a typical Buñuel film , as there is a lot of symbolism and surrealism , including mockery or wholesale review upon sexual behaviors . Luis Bunuel's Masterpiece of Erotica in which deals with a frigid young housewife , a virginal newlywed named Severine (Catherine Deneuve) married to a prestigious surgeon called Pierre (Jean Sorel) . She fantasizes about masochistic scenes with male people . Severine and Pierre's friend Henri Husson (Michel Piccoli) and his spouse Renee (Macha Meril) are usually having lunch together , then , Renee tells Séverine that their acquaintance Henriette is working in a brothel . Severine get the address of a high-class whorehouse in Paris and visits Madam Anais , she then decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute unbeknownst to her patient husband . As Severine works at her obsessive profession only from two to five . Surrealism and sour portrait upon higher classes, masochism , kinky sex , prostitution and sexual rites by the Spanish maestro of surrealism , the great Luis Buñuel . In most subtitled versions of the film, an italicized font is used to help the audience spot Séverine's fantasies from reality . According to Luis Buñuel scholar Julie Jones, Buñuel once said that he himself didn't know what the end exactly means . Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion , issues well shown in a lot of films and that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . Interesting and thought-provoking screenplay from the same Luis Buñuel and Jean Claude Carriere , Buñuel's usual screenwriter based on the novel by Joseph Kessel ,; they pull of a straight-faced treatment of shocking subject matter . After returning his native country, Spain, by making ¨Viridiana¨ this film was prohibited on the grounds of blasphemy as well as ¨The milky way¨ or Via Lactea , both of them were strongly prohibited by Spanish censorship . ¨Belle De Jour¨ is packed with surreal moments , criticism , absurd situations , masochism ; furthermore Buñuel satirizes and he carries out outright attacks to aristocracy , sadism and pro-sexual freedom . ¨Belle De Jour" is a day lily in French, a flower that blooms only by day, as Severine is available only during the afternoons. "Belle De Jour" is also a sort of pun, as it reminds us of "belle de nuit", an euphemism for prostitute . Deneuve's finest most enigmatic acting . Catherine Deneuve's famous buckled shoes were designed by Roger Vivier and her glamorous gowns by Ives Saint Laurent . Pretty good support cast gives fine acting ; it is mostly formed by nice French actors such as Michel Piccoli as Henri Husson , Geneviève Page as Madame Anais , Pierre Clémenti s Marcel , Françoise Fabian as Charlotte , Macha Méril as Renee and special mention to Spanish Francisco Rabal who played various Buñuel films such as Nazarin and Viridiana . In addition , Luis Buñuel cameo : Sitting in the outdoor café when the Duke gets off his carriage. Thid wry and disturbing motion picture was compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his French second period ; in fact , it's plenty of known French actors . As Buñuel subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France where filmed other excellent movies . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨ , as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently went on his Mexican period he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨The brute¨, "Wuthering Heights", ¨El¨ , "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Death in the garden¨ and many others . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films such as ¨Viridiana¨ , Tristana¨ , ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" , this ¨Belle De Jou¨ and his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire" . .

evening1 Here is the fascinating depiction of a woman so badly damaged by incest that she can't relate to her loving husband and spends most of her time in a world of fantasy, where she is tortured and raped.Catherine Deneuve dazzles as the picture-perfect, emotionally detached housewife suffering aftereffects of abuse by her father. One day she takes her self-flagellation from the realm of the mind to the chambers of a bordello, where it's unattractive johns who slap her around and make her bleed. As if that weren't punishment enough, Belle takes a freelance job in which she lies in a coffin to play the dead daughter of an obsessive incest perpetrator -- "I hope you can forgive me, but I loved you so" -- who masturbates below her scantily clad body.Severine/Belle de Jour admits she doesn't understand why she engages in actions that humiliate and harm her. Her blind acting out eventually claims the life of her greatest supporter -- and at that point it's Severine who has become an abuser herself.The only way she can tolerate this realization is to withdraw once again into the world of make-believe. And now Severine's fantasy is a joyous one. She has healed but is lost to the world. This is an incredibly grim and pessimistic film. When I first saw "Belle" years ago, I could make little sense of it. At last, I think I understand.