Belle de Jour (1967) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

People were better able to relate to this film when in came out in 1967, because it had a powerful emotional impact at that time. If you view it now, you'll find it to be a tame, elegant film that happens to have repressed sexuality as a main theme. In 1967 this was considered one groundbreakingly sexual and anarchic film. It had powerful anti-religious elements, it had a beautiful woman walking around in a completely see-through nightgown, and its central story revolves around a woman who longs to be degraded. It was roundly condemned by any right-thinking decent person in 1967. That, of course, made it a must-see for wrong-thinking indecent persons, and I was in the theater on opening day.

It's quite surprising to read what people write about this film. Some people call it a comedy, although there is nothing even remotely funny in any scene, and there wasn't for 1967 audiences either. It is sneeringly contemptuous which, as I have often noted, some people often mistake for humor. Sneering contempt may or may not be funny, depending, of course, on whether it has any humor in it. Other people call the film erotic, but whatever shocking frankness it may have had by 1967 standards, it now seems less erotic than Remembering the Titans. You won't be clouting the kielbasa after watching this one, lads. I'll guarantee you this if you watch it - no hard-ons, no laughs. Nothing even close.

Here is what some people think it is about: Deneuve plays a housewife who can't bring herself to have relations with her husband. She has a severe sexual dysfunction, which seems to relate to the fact that he treats her respectfully while she longs to be debased and fantasizes about being whipped. Her need for degradation seems to stem from a childhood sexual incident. She finds out about a local brothel, and she ends up working there daily between two and five in the afternoon, because the job will allow her to be treated like a whore. Or something like that. They call her "Belle de jour", a jokey derivative of the French expression "belle de nuit"  - a hooker, equivalent to the English phrase "lady of the evening". Since she never works evenings, she's a "lady of the afternoon".

Finally, a mob guy becomes obsessed with her, follows her home, attacks her husband ......

Or not.

Maybe that happened or maybe it didn't, because it is a Luis Buňuel film, and that means that there is no reality, only different levels of surreality.

SEMI-SPOILERS COMING

Well, you can't really spoil an ambiguous film that never resolves anything, but here goes ...

Actually, the film isn't as hard to understand as it seems to be, but it does engage you with a trick that requires your participation. You have to ask yourself, "is this like a real brothel, or is it what a sheltered Catholic school girl would imagine a brothel to be? Could this guy be a real gangster, or he is what a sheltered Catholic school girl would imagine a gangster to be like?" The answers are obvious, but it is not obvious that the question needs to be asked. Once it dawns on you to ask those questions, the film isn't that opaque.

That doesn't solve all your problems, however. It is still open to many different interpretations.

• Reality is never explicitly defined, so you could ask yourself this - is the entire movie imagined in the mind of a schoolgirl? We see Severine as a girl in flashbacks - or are they flashbacks? maybe they are the 'real" time, and the film is in flash-forwards, her vision of the future. A good case could be made for the contention that she is still a girl, thinking about the unpleasant incident, and is imagining her adulthood. She imagines herself exquisitely beautiful. She imagines an unimaginably handsome husband. She imagines a married life with - with two single beds??? Get it? What young couple lives in a house with two separate beds in the main bedroom? Who would think of such a thing besides a young girl with elderly parents who sleep in separate beds? What young husband with a sexually frigid wife doesn't ask her to seek psychiatric help, but simply accepts it lovingly? There is evidence that even her very marriage is a fantasy.
• It is also possible to say that the movie takes place in her adult life, and the marriage is reality, but that the period in the brothel is just another of her sexual daydreams, like the coachmen and the whippings.
• It is also possible to say that the brothel really existed, and the husband was really crippled, but that his recovery was one of her daydreams (although this interpretation doesn't really hold up as well to the light of scrutiny, if you try to fit it to the facts).