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CRITERION REVIEW: #593 BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967 #593 BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967 THE FILM: There’s a humility inherent to Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour that immediately isolates it from the rest of his work. Made in 1967 in the wake of Simon of the Desert — a film so angry that it burns through its own rage in a scant 45 minutes — Belle de Jour is positioned at the last pivotal fulcrum of Buñuel’s career, the project with which he began to temper the sociopolitical fury that characterized earlier work like The Exterminating Angel with a degree of awe and mystery. The softening wouldn’t last (his final film,The Obscure Object of Desire, ends in a plume of fire), but in Catherine Deneuve’s mercilessly perfect flesh he encountered an object that eluded the ire of his understanding, a dull and perfectly blank face that kept human desire submerged beneath a glimmering surface like an iceberg. A sex iceberg (*hold for Pulitzer*). Séverine Serizy: By night a bored bourgeoise housewife with a lame but functional marriage. By day, a high-end prostitute with a penchant for punishment and humiliation. Buñuel, who was compelled by Freud but ultimately scoffed at the totality of his conclusions, had by 1967 already made a career of exploring the facets of human nature that society felt compelled to ignore or extinguish, but with Belle de Jour he finally found a character unfit for his particular brand of torture, as she would have enjoyed it too much. We meet Séverine through her fantasies, as she’s strung up to a tree and raped by her husband’s carriage drivers. The steely young blonde enjoys imagining herself subjugated to such violations, her psyche’s resistance to a life soured and streamlined by a rigid society. She yearns for the upheaval that Buñuel typically visited upon his characters, and so the subversive iconoclast responds by transforming Séverine into Belle de Jour, a creature who is a fantasy, herself. The lines between her reality and her dreams for it are too blurred for Buñuel to navigate with his usual indignant precision, and so instead he shifts his focus away from how desire informs, to how it persists, festers, and takes over. Shot in the soft and centered fashion that Buñuel so often relied upon in order to prioritize his ideas over his aesthetics, Belle de Jour is nevertheless among the filmmaker’s most fetching works — erotic in a way that seems incapable of modern cinema, tawdry in the way that defines it, and eventually willing to sacrifice its momentum for mystery as it comes full circle. Channeling everything from Charade to Le Samouraï in an effort to confuse its own nature (and inspiring Mulholland Drive, it would seem), Belle de Jour hasn’t aged a day, its perversities too human to ever be reduced to kitsch. It’s not Buñuel’s best, and its simpler moments betray his disinterest, but the film remains a perfect testament as to why sex and Buñuel are two of the only things that will always make sense of why we don’t. THE TRANSFER: The most beautiful Criterion transfer of the month, the Belle de Jour Blu-ray is saturated to a rather extreme degree that I happen to really enjoy (mileage may vary). I find that the heightened hues call attention to the conflicting dimensions at the heart of this film, and the consistent veneer of unreality suits Séverine’s sexual limbo. Detail is magnificent, and the grain is modest but satisfyingly filmy. THE SPECIAL FEATURES: First and foremost is a commentary by film historian Michael Wood, which is a dryly analytical example of how a track can be enervated by a speaker who is a little bit too ensconced in the material. Wood knows his stuff, I mean the guy literally wrote the BFI book on the film, but while this may not be Last Year at Marienbad, it’s still a film that rewards free-association and a flexibility of thought, and the commentary feels a bit too cut-and-dry. I wouldn’t wish it away, but ideally it would have been complimented by a second, looser track. Also included is an exclusive 10-minute interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, in which a great deal is revealed about Buñuel’s idiosyncratic methods.  THE BEST BIT: My favorite thing on the disc is an 18-minute video essay starring “sexual-politics activist” Susie Bright, who focuses this no-holds barred look at the film through a very particular lens. Bright is fiercely intelligent, and should effectively unmoor any readings of the film that have become a bit too settled and secure.  THE ARTWORK: Wooooow. The stunningly evocative cover art comes courtesy of artist David Downton (no relation to the Abbey), whose work has previously graced the Criterion release of Lola Montes. A flowing portrait of Deneuve painted with thick brushstrokes and bisected by a black / white median that both underlines and mocks the film’s illusory moral divide, this is a perfect distillation of Belle de Jour, and the early frontrunner for the year’s best Criterion cover art. THE VERDICT: 87 / 100 HEAD OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ ABOUT ALL OF CRITERION’S JANUARY (NEW) RELEASES!

CRITERION REVIEW: #593 BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967

#593 BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967

THE FILM: There’s a humility inherent to Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour that immediately isolates it from the rest of his work. Made in 1967 in the wake of Simon of the Desert — a film so angry that it burns through its own rage in a scant 45 minutes — Belle de Jour is positioned at the last pivotal fulcrum of Buñuel’s career, the project with which he began to temper the sociopolitical fury that characterized earlier work like The Exterminating Angel with a degree of awe and mystery. The softening wouldn’t last (his final film,The Obscure Object of Desire, ends in a plume of fire), but in Catherine Deneuve’s mercilessly perfect flesh he encountered an object that eluded the ire of his understanding, a dull and perfectly blank face that kept human desire submerged beneath a glimmering surface like an iceberg. A sex iceberg (*hold for Pulitzer*).

Séverine Serizy: By night a bored bourgeoise housewife with a lame but functional marriage. By day, a high-end prostitute with a penchant for punishment and humiliation. Buñuel, who was compelled by Freud but ultimately scoffed at the totality of his conclusions, had by 1967 already made a career of exploring the facets of human nature that society felt compelled to ignore or extinguish, but with Belle de Jour he finally found a character unfit for his particular brand of torture, as she would have enjoyed it too much. We meet Séverine through her fantasies, as she’s strung up to a tree and raped by her husband’s carriage drivers. The steely young blonde enjoys imagining herself subjugated to such violations, her psyche’s resistance to a life soured and streamlined by a rigid society. She yearns for the upheaval that Buñuel typically visited upon his characters, and so the subversive iconoclast responds by transforming Séverine into Belle de Jour, a creature who is a fantasy, herself. The lines between her reality and her dreams for it are too blurred for Buñuel to navigate with his usual indignant precision, and so instead he shifts his focus away from how desire informs, to how it persists, festers, and takes over.

Shot in the soft and centered fashion that Buñuel so often relied upon in order to prioritize his ideas over his aesthetics, Belle de Jour is nevertheless among the filmmaker’s most fetching works — erotic in a way that seems incapable of modern cinema, tawdry in the way that defines it, and eventually willing to sacrifice its momentum for mystery as it comes full circle. Channeling everything from Charade to Le Samouraï in an effort to confuse its own nature (and inspiring Mulholland Drive, it would seem), Belle de Jour hasn’t aged a day, its perversities too human to ever be reduced to kitsch. It’s not Buñuel’s best, and its simpler moments betray his disinterest, but the film remains a perfect testament as to why sex and Buñuel are two of the only things that will always make sense of why we don’t.

THE TRANSFER: The most beautiful Criterion transfer of the month, the Belle de Jour Blu-ray is saturated to a rather extreme degree that I happen to really enjoy (mileage may vary). I find that the heightened hues call attention to the conflicting dimensions at the heart of this film, and the consistent veneer of unreality suits Séverine’s sexual limbo. Detail is magnificent, and the grain is modest but satisfyingly filmy.

THE SPECIAL FEATURES: First and foremost is a commentary by film historian Michael Wood, which is a dryly analytical example of how a track can be enervated by a speaker who is a little bit too ensconced in the material. Wood knows his stuff, I mean the guy literally wrote the BFI book on the film, but while this may not be Last Year at Marienbad, it’s still a film that rewards free-association and a flexibility of thought, and the commentary feels a bit too cut-and-dry. I wouldn’t wish it away, but ideally it would have been complimented by a second, looser track. Also included is an exclusive 10-minute interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, in which a great deal is revealed about Buñuel’s idiosyncratic methods. 

THE BEST BIT: My favorite thing on the disc is an 18-minute video essay starring “sexual-politics activist” Susie Bright, who focuses this no-holds barred look at the film through a very particular lens. Bright is fiercely intelligent, and should effectively unmoor any readings of the film that have become a bit too settled and secure. 

THE ARTWORK: Wooooow. The stunningly evocative cover art comes courtesy of artist David Downton (no relation to the Abbey), whose work has previously graced the Criterion release of Lola Montes. A flowing portrait of Deneuve painted with thick brushstrokes and bisected by a black / white median that both underlines and mocks the film’s illusory moral divide, this is a perfect distillation of Belle de Jour, and the early frontrunner for the year’s best Criterion cover art.

THE VERDICT: 87 / 100

HEAD OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ ABOUT ALL OF CRITERION’S JANUARY (NEW) RELEASES!

REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S JANUARY 2012 RELEASES! What do Godzilla and Catherine Deneuve’s character in Belle de Jour have in common? They’re both controlled by men in suits (hold for laughter). You know, try not to think about that one, too much. Criterion likes to start the year off on the right foot, and in 2012 that foot is stomping all over Tokyo. Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla kicks off this year’s roster in a big bad way, presenting a gloriously deluxe package of a film that some viewers might be surprised to discover is extremely worthy of the Criterion name. Luis Buñuel’s erotic puzzler Belle de Jour is the other major mainline release, and even if you hate the film (jerk) you’re gonna want this thing on your shelf. Also on tap are Francesco Rosi’s A Moment of Truth, and a Blu-ray upgrade of Soderbergh’s Traffic, the latter of which I’m not even going to review. I mean, I just saw this movie called In Time, and the moral was “Life is short, don’t waste it revisiting Traffic.” And that was a smart movie.* Okay, these reviews are a little late, so let’s get down to business before this before Criterion announces a Mothra box set. Be sure to visit the Criterion Corner Tumblr for a forthcoming review of this month’s other excellent release, an Eclipse Series dedicated to the documentary work of Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin. *In Time is not a smart movie. CLICK OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ THE REVIEWS!

REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S JANUARY 2012 RELEASES!

What do Godzilla and Catherine Deneuve’s character in Belle de Jour have in common? They’re both controlled by men in suits (hold for laughter). You know, try not to think about that one, too much. Criterion likes to start the year off on the right foot, and in 2012 that foot is stomping all over Tokyo. Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla kicks off this year’s roster in a big bad way, presenting a gloriously deluxe package of a film that some viewers might be surprised to discover is extremely worthy of the Criterion name.

Luis Buñuel’s erotic puzzler Belle de Jour is the other major mainline release, and even if you hate the film (jerk) you’re gonna want this thing on your shelf. Also on tap are Francesco Rosi’s A Moment of Truth, and a Blu-ray upgrade of Soderbergh’s Traffic, the latter of which I’m not even going to review. I mean, I just saw this movie called In Time, and the moral was “Life is short, don’t waste it revisiting Traffic.” And that was a smart movie.* Okay, these reviews are a little late, so let’s get down to business before this before Criterion announces a Mothra box set. Be sure to visit the Criterion Corner Tumblr for a forthcoming review of this month’s other excellent release, an Eclipse Series dedicated to the documentary work of Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin.

*In Time is not a smart movie.

CLICK OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ THE REVIEWS!

“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”

Luis Buñuel.

his Belle de Jour is now available on Criterion DVD & Blu-ray. your eyeballs work hard and never complain, they deserve this.

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International Poster Tour: BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967

so Buñuel’s erotic masterpiece (harvey weinstein’s words, not mine) finally arrives in the Criterion Collection today, and not to spoil my review or anything, but if there’s one 2012 Criterion that you absolutely must own so far this year, it’s this one, and given that it’s almost January 20th, that’s saying quite a bit (sorry, Traffic upgrade for which approximately zero people asked).

unsurprisingly, the myriad posters that Belle de Jour has inspired over the years are both immediately fetching and entirely predictable. it’s only the Polish (natch) who spiced things up a bit, veering away from catherine deneuve’s come hither stare with that inspired abstract design in the bottom right corner of the image tower above. that being said, methinks the Criterion cover art may be the best of the bunch. 

what say you?

Miramax DVD
RusciCo DVD
Studio Canal Blu-ray
Criterion Collection Blu-ray
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Blu-ray Transfer Death Match: BELLE DE JOUR

DVD Beaver has posted some comparative stills from the various home video editions of Luis Bunuel’s erotic masterpiece of back nudity, and, well… if you were silly enough not to be excited for Criterion’s upcoming release, your silliness is about to be exterminated with extremely precise prejudice. 

first off, this shot of catherine deneuve makes it immediately clear just how thorough a restoration the blu-ray editions of Belle de Jour have enjoyed. that scratch running down deneuve’s right shoulder has been totally eliminated. the blu-rays are obviously sharper, but by such a dramatic margin that the look on deneuve’s face seems completely different: the lack of detail in standard-def made her eyes look beady and cold, but in HD her expression seems more directly expectant. as for the colors, both blu-rays look great, but i feel the Studio Canal release is a touch too warm, and that Criterion has once again done right by a film by embracing its more earthly, organic tones. here, it seems like deneuve is the only bit of carnal life in a sterile environment, whereas in the studio canal transfer she almost sinks into the wall. 

anyway, you can all judge for yourselves when Criterion releases Belle de Jour on DVD & Blu-ray on 1/17/2012.

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JANUARY 2012 CRITERION RELEASES ANNOUNCED!

this is gonna be super brief as i’m running around like a madman today (but unfortunately, not like a Mad Man, as that would require much more dapperness than my current sleep schedule allows). tidy month for Criterion, as January 2012 will see them adding only three titles to the Collection, but all big ones. also arriving is the forever-rumored Jean-Pierre Gorin Eclipse Series. huzzah!

#593 BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Bunuel) 1967

perhaps the greatest Bunuel film that had yet to be inducted into the Collection, this release is gonna be a doozy. loaded to the gills with features and topped off with some of the most fetching artwork to have ever graced a dvd / blu-ray / thing. 

#594 GODZILLA (dir. Ishiro Honda) 1954

MAN-IN-SUIT.MAN-IN-SUIT.MAN-IN-SUIT.MAN-IN-SUIT.MAN-IN-SUIT.MAN-IN-SUIT.

the fact that this exists is kinda shocking and sublime. the fact that it looks like it does is just… they should have sent a poet. a mecha-poet.

#595 THE MOMENT OF TRUTH (dir. Francesco Rosi) 1964

haven’t seen this one (though it’s already up on Criterion’s Hulu page), but i love me some Rosi and men getting horribly gored by bulls, so despite the simmering disappointment that Almodovar’s TALK TO HER is *not* in fact heading imminently joining the Collection, i’m still mighty excited. that being said, not sure i’m wild about the cover, which captures the pivotal event in question in a blur of drama.

BLU-RAY UPGRADE:

#151 TRAFFIC (dir. Steven Soderbergh) 2000

just what my blu-ray collection needs: more topher grace.

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Wacky Criterion Drawing: “Soup du Jour”

tacked onto the bottom of Criterion’s latest newsletter was this wacky little drawing of a bell in cup of soup… 

there’s no two ways about it, folks, Criterion is prepping a release of Luis Bunuel’s 1967 masterpiece, BELLE DE JOUR. 

*hold for gasps of awe and glory*

i wouldn’t be surprised if Criterion trotted out this minor holy grail of titles in November, a month that serves as a perennial clearing house for their most anticipated releases. or maybe they’ll let it slide a bit and bulk up their usually sparse December slate… sorry Severine Serizy, but the cats are out.