Belle du Jour
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Belle de Jour
I like this movie, but not for the reasons I'm supposed to. That is, I'm not really supposed to like Catherine Denueve. For Bunuel the Marxist, debasement, the desire to become a prostitute, is all a rich bourgeois like Denueve has to look forward to when she's not wondering, all glassy eyed, about what's for dinner. So, boink, I guess I'm a Marxist! The route of all meaningful art, which is, thankfully, not all Bunuel wants. Or else you've got the updated assessment circa 2006 in which even a baby girl could see that the patriarchy is forcing Catherine Denueve to act against her will and undermine her domestic role. Or the notion that, structurally, the once frighteningly jarring style of Bunuel has culminated, in this film, into something smoother and far more menacing.
Maybe I'm dumb but all that just slides off my back when I'm in the theater. I'm entranced with the way the snake-like gangster (Peirre Clementi) rolls his cane around, or by Deneuve's face as it slowly thaws from bourgeois frigidity to sexual warmth, or appalled by whatever it is that burly, shirtless Japanese businessman has in his box (it buzzes like--yuck--a fly), and in general my mind is reassured by this movie in just the same way as it demands it be unsettled. The only way I wouldn't have enjoyed this film is if it had been a quality experience. Instead, it is surprising and interesting and rolls through emotional triggers like Clementi's gangster with his cane. And for dinner, I guess I'll have the Pad Thai.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 3:16 PM,
