The Grand Illusion

Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her after­noon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits. In French with English subtitles.

Part of our Love Stinks film series.

“Today, Belle de Jour remains Buñuel’s most recognized film, and while it’s not without its flaws, it’s a radical work that reimagines some of the director’s earlier surrealist impulses and anticipates the work of David Lynch.” Slant Magazine

“A shrewd commentary on the hypocrisy of social relations and sexual politics… A strange and captivating film.” The Guardian

“Buñuel’s handling of color is gorgeous. And the acting is impeccable. …Belle de Jour is, like much of Buñuel’s work, almost icily cold and impersonal but at the same time an oblique and paradoxical testament to love. …Pervading the film…are not the enticements of sensuality but the sadnesses of a society in which love and sensuality are seen too seldom as a unity and too frequently as a mutually destructive tangle.” LA Times