A beautiful day

Belle de Jour (1967, R)

As Reviewed by James Brundage

It would be a curious subject for a paper that would tally and analyze the sex of the noun "critic" in each language. As we are supposed to be mostly objective persons, the noun should be a neuter in every language that has one. We should not, even in the semantics of our language, have a predetermined side. A neuter noun is able to assume, in the majority of languages, both the properties of the masculine and feminine nouns. Some languages all neuter nouns to posses both properties at once.

In Latin, critic is iudex, a masculine noun. This seems a fair approximation of the profession. Despite many of my esteemed colleges, the movie industry is still looked upon from within as mostly a boy's game. Yet we should not be, as far as semantics are concerned, masculine. We should be utterly impartial.

Thus looking back, movies like Exotica and Belle du Jour, which I rented for the praises previously sung as to their erotic virtues (Last Tango in Paris is still on my list), go upon my list of professional regrets. I do not regret watching them. Both are highly thoughtful, intelligent films. However, being as both thoroughly male and thoroughly American as I am, I just can't not see the sex in a book like "Tropic of Cancer" or a movie like Belle du Jour.

Thus I must use the apt descriptor erotic in this review. Belle du Jour, without ever once baring a breast or uttering a four letter word rhyming with duck, remains one of the most sexy films I have ever seen. A good portion of this is due to Catherine Denevue's incredible on-screen presence, and an even greater portion comes from the plot: a woman is leading the double life of a high-priced hooker and a demure housewife.

Allow me to elaborate. Severine is, as the film enters, a woman who has been married a year and is still a virgin. This comes not out of a lack of desire on her husband's part, but upon a trepidation for losing her virginity. She is the personification of the ultimate need to be equal to a partner before becoming their lover. Because of this need to feel equal, she subjects herself to becoming an employee of a whorehouse run by one Mme Anais. Her working name is Belle de Jour, or Beauty of the Day.

In this second life she does not face the road of Pauline Reage's O -- that of final and ultimate despair. Instead, she finds within her extramarital affairs a comfort that finally enables her to be free of her trepidation and love her husband.

The incredibly interesting thing about Belle de Jour is its ability to blend the world of metaphor with the world of sex. To be both utterly fascinating and utterly erotic at the same time. Credit for this should go to writer-director Luis Bunuel, who inserts dream sequences intelligently and adds hundreds of the tiny little characterizations and camera tricks that make us feel a certain way about a movie but go are operating on our subconscious level so that we do not notice them. Credit should also go again to Catherine Deneuve, who is able to project just the right blend of innocence and sensuality to make her highly ambiguous character work.

Somewhere along the line, every other movie that I have ever watched that has tried to cross those two worlds has failed. Eyes Wide Shut and Exotica were intelligent but thoroughly unsexy. Wild Things, Body of Evidence, etc were thoroughly sexy but had the metaphors of a dull tack. Belle du Jour was both metaphoric and erotic. It is a true modernist masterpiece.