Belle de Jour

Surrealist director Luis Buñuel's 1967 drama, based on the 1928 novel by Joseph Kessel, about a young housewife (Catherine Deneuve) who spends her midweek afternoons as a prostitute.

"Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her after­noon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits." (Criterion Collection)

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