Belle de Jour

Director: Luis Buñuel

1967 / 100min / 35mm

Catherine Deneuve plays Séverine, a frigid bourgeoisie housewife impeccably turned out in Yves Saint Laurent and bored to tears with her conventional young husband, in Buñuel’s droll, deliciously perverse pillar of arthouse screen eroticism, which sees Séverine thaw and unleash her inner freak upon taking on weekday afternoon assignations at a local brothel, romping with visitors that include Pierre Clémenti’s metal-mouthed gangster and a Geisha Club member with a pair of Ben-Wa balls and a mysterious buzzing box… “Glittery, cool and urbane, Buñuel’s film looks just like Lubitsch à la mode—almost a design for living in the Playgirl era. But underneath it’s a bleak and sharp surrealist object.” —Raymond Durgnat