One of the great surrealist dramas and a staple of cerebral erotica. Luis Bunuel, a director who has been considered the front-runner of Surrealism in cinema, has created a movie that unfolds like a Moebius strip -- beginning at the end, ending at the beginning, with no conclusion to its question. Who is Severine? The question is asked in several key moments throughout the story, but never answered in a satisfactory manner. All that can be done is to sit back and watch the story of how Severine gives in to her own desires and inner dreams and gets lost along the way....
Erotica is one of the least understood of literary genres because of the exploitative nature associated with it. Very few people today can write erotica in a way that doesn't, in one way or another, fall into the traps of having to show more than imply and therefore render its effect a moot point. Writers Anais Nin and Pauline Reage were keen in making their worlds places where despite some explicit passages, sensuality was felt through a looking glass filter rather than slapped across the face. When seen under a surrealist vein, erotica becomes less sexual, more cerebral, and completely revelatory.
Severine, like Sabina in Anais Nin's poetic novella of erotica "A Spy in the House of Love," is dissatisfied with her life. Like Sabina's husband Alan, Pierre is completely unaware of who he's married to and is all business and travel. Both women, meanwhile, dream of escape, of male dominance asserting their own freedom, and will jeopardize their security. Both characters will undergo complete changes in their personality, under the guise of role-play, never allowing themselves to become attached to other men even when they may want to possess them completely, as Marcel does when Severine becomes inaccessible to him.
Cinematically BELLE DE JOUR is perfect (even when this term sounds cliché). Severine's story is a full circle: she's seen in black, disguise, walking into Madame Anais' town-home; she emerges near the end wearing the same outfit, a cold socialite. (It's an interesting coincidence that Anais is the ringleader who controls Severine's dreamy incursions into sex, and this story bears a strong relation to Anais Nin's erotic writings, themselves incursions into surrealistic sensual dreams.) Madame Anais seduces her in the beginning with a kiss; Severine "severs" ties with Anais through a kiss. Also, Severine is framed in an isolated way, at the fringes of the action, in two scenes involving a male client at Anais' town-home -- both times this only makes her more visible, naked, vulnerable. In both she is taken by force, though the second encounter initiates those events that break the third wall and literally walk into her Architectural Digest home.
BELLE DE JOUR is extremely, undeniably erotic. The opening sequence per se looks rather mundane -- Severine is subjected to a scene of debasement while her husband Pierre looks on -- but as the story progresses, it will take on a different connotation and from here on, unfold. Because there is no transition from this sequence to the next where Severine and Pierre are in their placid, empty bedroom, it sort of leaves the viewer hanging and wondering just what has taken place, or if anything has happened at all. Of course, Severine's own psyche takes center stage more assertively as she herself gets a stronger footing in her new situation, so these shifts become clearer as the movie goes deeper into her story.
Sounds also play an important part of Severine's story: the jingling of bells signal the awakening of an erotic episode. Footmen enter the stage and bookend the story, cowbells become the appearance of bulls bearing names referring to "expiation", Severine is sodomized by a "bull-like" Asian man bearing a box that hums softly (and whatever is inside has to be clearly repugnant when another escort refuses to go to bed with the client).
Bunuel, of course, wants show the hypocrisy behind the complacency of the upper class, and what better way to do so than via guilt. Severine, for example, can't stand Henri, her girlfriend's boyfriend, but through his suggestion she enters this strange world of hidden sexuality. We see her on two occasions as a little girl, in two moments of humiliation through her own guilt. She desires Henri while she also hates him -- a guilty pleasure. Henri discovers her secret and exposes her for what she is -- a common slut. If anything, even when he seems the villain of the piece, Henri can be related to Everyman longing for the ideal woman. Once he finds that she's really not that mysterious after all, he dumps her because she's lost her abstraction.
It's this event -- ripping Severine off from her pedestal -- that finally "severs" her secure world even when she's apparently abandoned her profession. Again, much like Sabina in "Spy..." Severine is doomed now to assume a different role while still longing for her more carnal life, and with the faint ringing of those ghostly bells coming not long after Pierre reacts, weeping, to this "revelation", and possibly even dies (his twisted hand is an indication) it makes me wonder if their appearance is only the beginning of her punishment and another way the story becomes a complete cycle of erotic evolution that will take the viewer back to the Bois du Bologne and that coach ride.
Erotica is one of the least understood of literary genres because of the exploitative nature associated with it. Very few people today can write erotica in a way that doesn't, in one way or another, fall into the traps of having to show more than imply and therefore render its effect a moot point. Writers Anais Nin and Pauline Reage were keen in making their worlds places where despite some explicit passages, sensuality was felt through a looking glass filter rather than slapped across the face. When seen under a surrealist vein, erotica becomes less sexual, more cerebral, and completely revelatory.
Severine, like Sabina in Anais Nin's poetic novella of erotica "A Spy in the House of Love," is dissatisfied with her life. Like Sabina's husband Alan, Pierre is completely unaware of who he's married to and is all business and travel. Both women, meanwhile, dream of escape, of male dominance asserting their own freedom, and will jeopardize their security. Both characters will undergo complete changes in their personality, under the guise of role-play, never allowing themselves to become attached to other men even when they may want to possess them completely, as Marcel does when Severine becomes inaccessible to him.
Cinematically BELLE DE JOUR is perfect (even when this term sounds cliché). Severine's story is a full circle: she's seen in black, disguise, walking into Madame Anais' town-home; she emerges near the end wearing the same outfit, a cold socialite. (It's an interesting coincidence that Anais is the ringleader who controls Severine's dreamy incursions into sex, and this story bears a strong relation to Anais Nin's erotic writings, themselves incursions into surrealistic sensual dreams.) Madame Anais seduces her in the beginning with a kiss; Severine "severs" ties with Anais through a kiss. Also, Severine is framed in an isolated way, at the fringes of the action, in two scenes involving a male client at Anais' town-home -- both times this only makes her more visible, naked, vulnerable. In both she is taken by force, though the second encounter initiates those events that break the third wall and literally walk into her Architectural Digest home.
BELLE DE JOUR is extremely, undeniably erotic. The opening sequence per se looks rather mundane -- Severine is subjected to a scene of debasement while her husband Pierre looks on -- but as the story progresses, it will take on a different connotation and from here on, unfold. Because there is no transition from this sequence to the next where Severine and Pierre are in their placid, empty bedroom, it sort of leaves the viewer hanging and wondering just what has taken place, or if anything has happened at all. Of course, Severine's own psyche takes center stage more assertively as she herself gets a stronger footing in her new situation, so these shifts become clearer as the movie goes deeper into her story.
Sounds also play an important part of Severine's story: the jingling of bells signal the awakening of an erotic episode. Footmen enter the stage and bookend the story, cowbells become the appearance of bulls bearing names referring to "expiation", Severine is sodomized by a "bull-like" Asian man bearing a box that hums softly (and whatever is inside has to be clearly repugnant when another escort refuses to go to bed with the client).
Bunuel, of course, wants show the hypocrisy behind the complacency of the upper class, and what better way to do so than via guilt. Severine, for example, can't stand Henri, her girlfriend's boyfriend, but through his suggestion she enters this strange world of hidden sexuality. We see her on two occasions as a little girl, in two moments of humiliation through her own guilt. She desires Henri while she also hates him -- a guilty pleasure. Henri discovers her secret and exposes her for what she is -- a common slut. If anything, even when he seems the villain of the piece, Henri can be related to Everyman longing for the ideal woman. Once he finds that she's really not that mysterious after all, he dumps her because she's lost her abstraction.
It's this event -- ripping Severine off from her pedestal -- that finally "severs" her secure world even when she's apparently abandoned her profession. Again, much like Sabina in "Spy..." Severine is doomed now to assume a different role while still longing for her more carnal life, and with the faint ringing of those ghostly bells coming not long after Pierre reacts, weeping, to this "revelation", and possibly even dies (his twisted hand is an indication) it makes me wonder if their appearance is only the beginning of her punishment and another way the story becomes a complete cycle of erotic evolution that will take the viewer back to the Bois du Bologne and that coach ride.