"Belle de Jour"; beautiful day, beautiful film

One of the many beauties of "Belle de Jour" is that it doesn't show us too much. The irony of it is that director Luis Bunuel was hardly one to hold anything back in his earlier films. His short 1929 surrealistic masterpiece "Un Chien Andalou" is often considered to be one of the most audacious pieces of cinema ever filmed, and his first feature-length film, "L'Age d'Or" (1931), is even more so. Such notorious moments in those two films include an eye being sliced in half with a razor, a man with ants crawling from a hole in his hand, a surprisingly brutal sexual assault, a woman sensuously sucking the toe of a statue, and a man brutally shooting and killing a young boy. All show without reservation of any kind, which makes it all-the-more interesting to watch "Belle de Jour" in which restraint is such a key component to the building of it's mysterious mood.

Catherine Deneuve, 24 at the time, plays Severine, the dissatisfied wife of surgeon Pierre (Jean Sorel). The classic opening scene of the film portrays Severine being dragged into the woods by her husband, tied to a tree, and whipped by another man. Pierre then tells the man to rape her, and when he begins to remove his clothes, Severine snaps out of the vision. What might be a horrid, intensely disturbing nightmare to another woman is a kind of twisted dream for Severine, who obviously has a desire to be treated roughly and unladylike during sex. Pierre, an understated and quiet man, is hardly the one to fulfill that desire. Bunuel carefully balances their relationship, in which, while it's obviously not a sexually vivacious one (they sleep in separate beds), the two people love each other. Severine wishes for a different kind of eroticism, but we can sense that she wouldn't want to give up her love for Pierre in order to achieve that satisfaction.

Severine's adventure of sexual self-discovery begins when she hears that an old friend is earning cash as a prostitute. Instantly intrigued by the notion of giving one's self to unknown men, she searches out an underground brothel, and is soon a part of a trio of Madame's, catering daily to wealthy patrons. While balancing her sexual day-job with that of her almost father-daughter-like relationship to her husband, Severine becomes infatuated by a dangerous and unstable criminal, who ends up interfering and blending her two lives in an unexpected (and ironic) way.

Outwardly, it would be easy to look at "Belle de Jour" as a simple tale of a woman disheartened by her average life, who rebels against it in a manner unbefitting to her. But Bunuel doesn't offer us that easy conclusion. The fact that Severine still deeply loves her husband, and has no desire to discard that life, shows that there isn't an easy way to properly evaluate human emotions. They grow, they change, but they remain ambiguous throughout, and singular in every sense. It also doesn't look at prostitution as simply an easy cash fix, but an erotic desire, vastly separating it from films dealing with the same subject matter. In looking at it in that manner, who's to say that individuals can't control their own urges? When monetary issues are at the forefront of disdainful actions, one can find it easier to sympathize with a person. But what if they're not?

Bunuel raises many questions while building Severine's character, and portraying her blossoming urge to partake in abnormal sexual practices. In a couple of subtle scenes, it's hinted that Severine might have been sexually abused as a child, but it doesn't linger on these sequences. In fact, it's one of the first films I've seen in which childhood sexual abuse is shown as more of a fading memory or backstory than a driving force behind the now-adult's motives and attitudes. While we expect these notions to flower into a full interpretation of the effects of sexual abuse, Bunuel holds back, once again showing that desire doesn't always stem from past experiences, but somewhere unknown and mysterious. Even something as atrocious as pedophilia can't always explain the motives of an adult mind, and in Severines case, might actually fuel her passion in a strange way. Like many of the aspects of "Belle de Jour", this is enigmatically portrayed, so no definite conclusion can be drawn from the proposal.

There is also the question of whether or not Severine is a virgin before her first encounter in the whorehouse. In examining her tepid relationship to her husband, it might be assumed, but whether she's physically a virgin or not isn't what matters. The fact that she's living out her fantasies is what does. Like an adolescent daydreaming about a first sexual encounter, Severine fantasises about self-degrading sexual practices which she has never partaken in, and when those actions finally are upon her, she's still mentally a first-timer. In this respect, her adventure can be seen as an exploration, and unveiling of a bothersome enigma, and not simply a decadent romp through a trashy underground.

"Belle de Jour" is almost unceasingly mysterious, which is totally intentional. No sex is show. There is no full nudity in the film. Eroticism is portrayed as a mental state, not a physical one, which might explain why it's often considered to be one of the sexiest, but least exploitative, films ever made. Not only sex in and of itself is portrayed imperspicuously, but desires and motivations that lead to individual satisfaction. One of the most talked about scenes in the film involves an oriental man who enters the brothel with a small box that makes a slight buzzing noise when opened. We see him open it first for another woman, whose reaction is to jump back in disgust, then for Severine, who seems uninterested in it, but nonetheless does what the man wants. Afterwards, her disheveled state as she lies in the bed exhausted makes us wonder what was actually in the box. So, what was? We're not meant to know, as it accentuates Bunuels goal to portray individual eroticism and turn-on's as singular; something that no one else can possibly understand. Another enigmatic scene has Severine traveling to an unknown man's house and performing a strange ritual for him in which she pretends she is dead. The man crawls under her coffin, and it shakes, but we never know what's happening under there.

And the last scene in the film has provoked quite an amount of discussion. Pierre, in a kind of semi-coma from a gunshot wound, suddenly jumps out of his chair, embraces Severine, who then walks to the window and looks out at an empty carriage being pulled across the autumn leaves. From the point in which Pierre arises, Severine is obviously dreaming, as she had done so many times in the film. Her mysterious signature dream-sounds of bells and cats meowing tell us this. But, rather than wishing degradation on herself, she's content to be with Pierre in this sequence, and there are no other men, no whips or ropes, and no brutal eroticism. And the carriage, which had taken her first to her rape in the woods and then her symbolic death sequence in a strange man's mansion, only serving to distance her from her real love, now bears no one, and she and Pierre are together, and satisfied. Her journey is complete.

Of course, other interpretations are certainly warranted, which is one of the great things about the film. It's a film that raises many questions, poses a few hypothetical answers, but leaves many of the ultimate conclusions shrouded, allowing the viewer to ruminate over their significance and overall meaning. "Belle de Jour" is one of the great visions of erotic mystery and discovery, separated by the fact that it knows that sex and sexuality are two entirely different things.

Luis Bunuel is best known for his early surrealistic endeavors with Salvador Dali (the aforementioned "Un Chien Andalou", and "L'Age d'Or"), and his biting social satires depicting the morality of the bourgeois, middle-class society ("The Exterminating Angel", "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois"); many fail to mention "Belle de Jour" in the same breath, but in fact, it just might be the best blend of the two styles, surrealism (Severines mysterious visions) and class examination (Severines want to be looked and acted upon as a low-class individual, when, in fact, she lives an upper-class life), Bunuel ever crafted.