‘Belle de Jour’ – the cost of sexual fantasy

“BELLE DE JOUR: THE CRITERION COLLECTION”

Blu-ray widescreen and DVD widescreen, 1967, unrated, but definitely for mature audiences

Best extra: Commentary by historian Michael Wood

ONE OF SURREALIST director Luis Buñuel’s most accessible (and ultimately most commercial) films, “Belle de Jour,” is the story of Séverine (Catherine Deneuve), a stunningly beautiful and wealthy young woman. Married to a handsome surgeon, Séverine coldly rejects his amorous overtures while her vivid fantasy life is replete with extravagant masochistic sexual scenarios. She tries to realize those fantasies by spending her afternoons as a prostitute in an upscale brothel, ultimately with disastrous results.

Criterion reliably offers a beautiful high-def version of this classic social satire. Indoor and outdoor scenes have excellent depth, colors are beautifully saturated, and close-ups are perfectly detailed with every strand of Deneuve’s coiffure as clear as Pierre Clémenti’s bizarre silver front teeth. The dialogue and restrained soundtrack are sharp and clean. Viewers could not ask for a more complete cinematic experience.

Extras include “That Obscure Source of Desire,” a 2011 documentary in HD, in which Susie Bright and Linda Williams long-windedly discuss female masochism; a brief HD interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière; a 1966 French television show with Deneuve and Carrière; and an illustrated booklet containing an essay by critic Melissa Anderson and Buñuel interview excerpts. The commentary by Michael Wood, a Princeton professor, is the most enlightening. Despite occasional lapses into describing what is on the screen, Wood lends insight into public reactions to the film, comparisons with the novel it was based on, and cool trivia about Buñuel’s cinematic tributes to other films (“Breathless”) and directors (Hitchcock).

— Peggy Earle

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