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Belle Toujours (2007)

Director: Manoel de Oliveira

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Synopsis

Four decades after Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli engaged in psycho-sexual S&M for Buñuel in ‘Belle du Jour’, 98-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (‘I’m Going Home’) revisits the characters in this intriguing footnote. Piccoli recreates his role as the malicious Husson, but Bulle Ogier steps in for Deneuve.

Movie review

From Time Out New York

There’s something perversely fun about the idea of making a sequel to Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, the 1967 sex fantasy about a good housewife (Catherine Deneuve) gone bad. Alas, Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira is not the guy to pull it off. Since his gentle 2001 breakthrough, I’m Going Home, De Oliveira has been renowned for a somewhat nostalgic vein of humanism—and for being very old (he’s 98). Buñuel would never have rested on such accomplishments.

So even though the new film is set in a promisingly sexualized Paris—a light from the Eiffel Tower sweeps the night like a roving eye—its randy pursuer, Henri (Piccoli), has become the typically benign old dude recognizable from a zillion Miramax films. One evening, he spies his former conquest Séverine (who’s also changed, from Deneuve to the less enigmatic Ogier) and begins to stalk her. Just a doodle at this point, the film climaxes in a lengthy early-bird dinner, almost wordless, in which clinks of silverware and swigs of alcohol connote a kind of courtship. Both performers make the most of skimpy roles, raising an eyebrow or focusing a gaze. But only those who’ve forgotten Buñuel’s psychosexual daring will find such modest achievements nourishing.

Author: Joshua Rothkopf 2007-06-14 17:02:13

Time Out New York Issue 610: June 7–13, 2007

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Belle Toujours

Cast & crew

Director: Manoel de Oliveira

Cast: Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier

Rated: NR

Duration: 67 mins


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