Luis Buñuel

Belle de jour (1967)

Belle de jour (1967)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Criterion Streaming, August 2019) There’s quite a bit of (tasteful) perversity at play in Belle de jour, and it’s consistent with what I know of writer-director Luis Bunuel’s work. It does begin with a sequence that seems to go quickly from plausibility to complete deliriousness, only for the truth to emerge and make the sequence even more perverse as a fantasy. This lands us in the head of our protagonist, a married woman unable to be intimate with her husband, but increasingly tempted to become a high-end prostitute by day. Much of the remainder of Belle de jour is taken up with her experiences at the house where she practises her trade, various clients rotating through the film. Two more off-putting fantasies spice things up. It’s possible to see quite a few themes at play here, but the one I’ll highlight has to do with prostitution not as a sexual act, but as one of willing compliance—the protagonist learns from the other girls that the trade isn’t as much about pleasing clients sexually as presenting to them the façade of what they expect from a partner compliant to their desires. The switch between their two faces is fascinating and handled with a decent dark humour that prevents the film from being unbearable. Catherine Deneuve makes the most out of her 1960s doll-like features as the titular Lady of the Day—she’s fascinating and the film doesn’t have any trouble making us interested in what will happen to her next. I should also be noted that there is almost no nudity in Belle de jour besides a few exposed backs—the film takes place on another register, far more pernicious. It’s more interesting than I would have expected.

Un chien Andalou (1929)

Un chien Andalou (1929)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, July 2019) Often mentioned as a classic of surrealism, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s Un chien Andalou can be a tough watch. It starts on the single most unpleasant note imaginable, with a succession of two shots suggesting a woman’s eye being cut open with a straight razor. (If you look closely at the second shot, you can see it’s a dead farm animal’s eye, but most people don’t look that closely … and it’s not much of an improvement.)  Old-school surrealism was extremely violent by design, and the following scenes certainly give into that tradition what with ants drawling out of a hole in a man’s hand, someone getting hit by a car, amputation, a disappeared mouth and so on. Do not try to make sense of the film, which -at best—follows a twisted kind of dream logic and at worse is just trying to get a rise out of an audience craving narrative. Some of it can be very funny (such as the title cards boldly announcing things like “Sixteen years later” without it having any sort of bearing) and some of it quite horrifying. Un chien Andalou does feel like a far more modern film than a 1929 title, mostly due to pre-Code levels of eroticism and ultra-violence. Paradoxically, it’s a large part (aside from the pedigree of the creators) why it’s still worth a (well prepared) look today. At least it’s barely more than twenty minutes long, meaning that it will soon be over even if you don’t enjoy it.

Viridiana (1961)

Viridiana (1961)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Kanopy Streaming, October 2018) I’m not saying that there isn’t some potential in a movie taking on religion and rich people as satirical targets. But I’m saying that Viridiana isn’t it—not with its muddled message, punching down to the homeless as objects of scorn, fuzzy dramatic arc and few overriding commitment of cohesion. But then again—it’s from writer/director Luis Bunuel, meaning that consistency may not be the point. The plot, as loosely as it can be called as such, has to do with a noviciate visiting her wealthy uncle, avoiding his seduction, staying at the mansion following his death and the arrival of her half-cousin, trying to morally uplift some vagrants who then trash the mansion, avoiding another sexual assault and then settling into a ménage-a-trois with her half-cousin and a servant. Or something along these lines—I wasn’t exactly paying rapt attention to the film by then. There is some supposedly comic material here (usually mixing piety and vulgarity, such as when the homeless re-create The Last Supper) but it usually feels haughty and forced. I strongly suspect that the different social context matters: The Vatican designated the film as blasphemous, whereas there’s little here that modern audiences would find particularly shocking. (The film itself is still a bit off-putting, what with its multiple instances of sexual assault.) It doesn’t amount to much—Viridiana may have some potential, but it feels obvious and mean today, much of the satirical intention has been stripped away by the decades.

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie [The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie] (1972)

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie [The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie] (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, October 2018) I liked Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie quite a bit more than I expected, which is saying something given my usual reluctance toward surrealism and/or French cinema of the 1970s. Writer/director Luis Buñuel does have a few surprises up his sleeve, though, the best of those being the dry black humour of a film in which anything and everything can happen. Once you accept that Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie is pure surrealism (which doesn’t take all that long, even taking into account that 1970s French bourgeoisie was weird enough), the rest is simple joy as the film zigs and zags between dreams and absurdity. Violence abounds, but the film remains riotously funny even as the black comedy gets even darker. The flipside is that nothing means much, so it’s not really worth watching the film for characters or plotting as much as a series of sketches featuring more or less the same cast. Which isn’t to say that the film is meaningless comedy—while it’s strongest when it’s at its funniest, there’s enough of a graphic (at times unsubtle) illustration of hypocrisy to keep thematic engines running. Even for plot-centred viewers such as myself, meaningless isn’t the same thing as worthless, and Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie gives us enough narrative breadcrumbs to sweeten its own surrealist intent. I liked it more than I thought I would. In fact, I may even enjoy a repeated viewing in a few years.