FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Belle de Jour - 40th Anniversary [1967] [DVD]

Belle de Jour - 40th Anniversary [1967] [DVD]
enlarge	Director: Luis Bunuel Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi Studio: Optimum Home Entertainment Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £4.89 as of 25/11/2009 04:09 GMT details You Save: £15.10 (76%) New (20) Used (4) from £3.75 Seller: findprice Rating: 8 reviews Sales Rank: 3642 Format: Anamorphic, PAL Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over Region: 2 Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 101 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5060034577621 ASIN: B000KRMZB0 Theatrical Release Date: 1967 Release Date: January 22, 2007 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 8 1 2 Next » Belle. March 1, 2007 Nathan Merchant (Northern Hemisphere) 30 out of 31 found this review helpful Belle De Jour is perhaps Bunuel's most accessible film, and strangely has the most vivid dream/fantasy sequences. While the plot sounds outlandish and unlikely, Catherine Deneuve's Severine makes a convincing transition from frigid, confused housewife to whore and temptress who delights in living her sexual fantasies, and strangely becomes closer to her husband as a result. br / br /For a film set in a brothel, it's quite discreet when it comes to sex, and most of the 'action' is implied, though Bunuel takes full advantage of the opportunity to portray the fetishism of some of the clients, himself a foot fetishist. br / br /An ambitious and ultimately successful film which would still be controversial (and would still eclipse most contemporary cinema) were it released today. Stunning February 2, 2007 Connoisseur 23 out of 24 found this review helpful It's quite amazing that a film like this could have been made in 1967. Absolutely a classic. A fascinating exploration of female masochistic fantasies, from the opening sequence to the end. Yet there's very little nudity: it's all hinted at. And the 2007 transfer to DVD is really excellent quality for a film of this age: vibrant colors and good resolution. If the theme interests you, you should definitely watch this. A classic by Bunuel and starring Deneuve July 31, 2007 C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) 21 out of 22 found this review helpful Severine (Catherine Deneuve) is newly wed to a successful, young, handsome Parisian doctor, Pierre (Jean Sorel). He loves her deeply, but yearns for her to express her love in more sexual ways. Severine is chaste in her marriage, but her fantasy life is vivid and encompassing. She moves from reserve to abandonment in her mind, and we find ourselves involved in her life and her fantasies. She learns of a place where well-to-do, bored young wives play at being prostitutes. She's drawn to the idea and finally begins a hidden life from her husband, but only from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. She becomes Belle de Jour. She finds a need for released sexuality, and for humiliation and masochism. One of her clients is a young, tough hood with steel teeth, a sword cane and brutal manners. She's drawn to him, but who is using whom? She pulls back, and a confrontation may or may not be conclusive. Is it real, or another fantasy? br / br /This is a great Bunuel film, sexual, serious, satirical. It's all about what's going on in Severine's head, and the erotic sexual life she lives. And its about sexual fantasies, most of which appear absurd when looked at. While Severine's story is fascinating, there is much of Bunuel's typical love of fetish at what he shows. The movie opens with Severine and Pierre taking a horse-drawn carriage ride into the country. The bells on the carriage begin to jingle and Pierre stops the carriage and orders the two drivers to pull Severine from the carriage, whip her and rape her. When did the fantasy in Severine's head start? In one scene Pierre and his saturnine friend played by Michel Piccoli are in the country and begin shoveling black, stinking mud into a pail. In the next instance we see Piccoli throwing handsfull of mud onto Severine, tied up and dressed in a virginal white gown. Throughout the movie the sounds of bells tinkling and cats mewing trigger a shift into erotic fantasy for Severine. br / br /Bunuel's satiric look at mankind also shows through clearly. Severine, working afternoons as Belle de Jour, encounters a world famous gynecologist who dresses as a servant so he can be humiliated by a prostitute acting as the lady of the house. There is the large man with something in a small, enameled box that buzzes which makes one of the women say, "No," but which intrigues Severine. We never learn what's in the box. There is the duke who is aroused only when he can play the mourner with a woman pretending to be a corpse in an open casket. It all sounds grotesque, but it's funny, too. And there's not a moment of explicit sex in the film, and only a glimpse of partial nudity. br / br /The movie is almost 40 years old and is still a fascinating look into Severine's life and her fantasies, and probably into ours as well. Deneuve is what makes the movie work. She may appear at first to be a perfectly groomed ice queen, but before long you know that a great deal is happening behind that face. Like Isabelle Huppert, she can imply serious, unsettling emotions just by looking calm. Deneuve at her best April 24, 2009 Jonathan Carr (London, UK) 5 out of 5 found this review helpful This compelling movie about female sexuality stands up today. While Deneuve is fabulously understated, and beautifully dressed, there is a lot of insight here into the creepy side of male sexuality and the boring side of marriage. I can't think of anyone even in France who would attempt a film like this today. It makes for uncomfortable, edgy viewing. In spite of a poor ending the film is a tribute to French cinema and to fashion. br / br /The DVD extras are also brilliant. A terrific gift. An unbalance look at female sexual perversion December 2, 2007 Jenny J.J.I. (That Lives in Northern Nevada) 6 out of 8 found this review helpful Belle de Jour most definitely belongs to the realm of cinematic classics. It is arguably the most accessible of Bunuel's films and probably the best introduction to his work because it did for me. br / br /Séverine (Deneuve) has everything a young middle class woman is supposed to want. She has a handsome, caring doctor for a husband named Pierre (Sorel), a beautiful home, and plenty of fashionable clothing. But she is not happy. Her bland spouse treats her like a child, so she indulges in dark brutal fantasies filled with guilt, passion, and pain. Already inclined to sadomasochistic fantasies due to some unknown trauma in her past, Severine is increasingly drawn to acting upon her need for degradation. Bored with her life, she works during the afternoons at a brothel which caters to this proclivity, yet she is still the good bourgeois wife who informs her madam that she has to be home by five p.m. (her alias at the brothel is Belle de Jour, a pun on the French euphemism for prostitute, "belle de nuit"). She enjoys this double life until one of her customers, a gangster, becomes so obsessed with her to the point that he is determined to kill her husband. What follows next is a meditation on ambiguity on all levels. Severine is morally torn between living as an upper-class ice maiden and an abandoned fantasy woman. Although Severine is trying to stop her husband's murder, her efforts seem to be somewhat half-hearted, almost as if she is willing to tempt fate. br / br /Thanks to Sacha Vierny's stunning color cinematography, Yves Saint Laurent's couture and her own genes, Deneuve herself looks beautiful that even she seems unreal an indication of how beautiful Deneuve is in this film can be found by recalling Grace Kelly in her Hitchcock period. Finally, the narrative structure is strained by events to the point where the audience cannot be certain whether anything recounted in the course of the film belongs to the realm of the physical or the psychological -- not unlike life itself, at times. Towards the end of this film you'll come to fine out that Severine likes molestation. That is the heart of her perversity and the film's. It absolutely refuses to help us be good bourgeois. Bunuel's naturalistic style was subversive and sadistic. Its pitiless anti-aestheticism means you watch without painkillers. No ambivalence, no softening, no way out. Either you respond from your own perversity, or you check your watch. br / Showing reviews 1-5 of 8 1 2 Next »

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