Belle De Jour

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). When her lovestruck friend Henri (Michel Piccoli) mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais (Genevieve Page), Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients (Pierre Clémenti) grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

It is possibly the best-known erotic film of modern times, perhaps the best. That’s because it understands eroticism from the inside-out--understands how it exists not in sweat and skin, but in the imagination. ”Belle de Jour” is seen entirely through the eyes of Severine, the proper 23-year-old surgeon’s wife, played by Catherine Deneuve. Bunuel, who was 67 when the film was released, had spent a lifetime making sly films about the secret terrain of human nature, and he knew one thing most directors never discover: For a woman like Severine, walking into a room to have sex, the erotic charge comes not from who is waiting in the room, but from the fact that she is walking into it. Sex is about herself. Love of course is another matter.

1967

R

715515088916

Drama

Criterion Collection

Movie

The Criterion Collection

593

2018-02-09 13:00:30

1.66:1

100

France

1.66:1

1

1

~$17.20

2026-02-07

2018-02-09 13:00:30