Belle de jour

France, Italy, 1967

Fantasy, Drama

Synopsis

Frigid, beautiful young housewife Séverine cannot reconcile her kinky, sadomasochistic imagination with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. She starts an afternoon job in a local, high-class brothel under the name Belle de Jour while her husband is away at work

Our take

Luis Buñuel’s magnificently kinky dark comedy about secret desire was his biggest popular success, and continues to shock, provoke, and delight audiences to this day. Catherine Deneuve is the film’s guiding light: sly, opaque, gorgeous, and dressed top-to-toe in YSL, she is nothing short of iconic.

Belle de jour Directed by Luis Buñuel

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Awards & Festivals

Cannes Film Festival

2017 | Cannes Classics

Venice Film Festival

1967 | 2 wins including: Golden Lion

Berlin International Film Festival

2008

Telluride Film Festival

2004

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Cast & Crew

Articles from the Notebook

Critics reviews

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Belle de Jour, Luis Buñuel’s coolly outrageous masterpiece (and greatest commercial success), features Catherine Deneuve as a haute bourgeois matron who spends her afternoons working at a respectable, but hardly deluxe, brothel. As flawless as its star, the movie is founded on the great surrealist’s genius for free-associative chitchat and orchestrated Freudian slips, right down to its teasingly open ending.

J. Hoberman

February 27, 2018

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Some Came Running

So much is going on, and yet all of it seems effortless, comfortable in mastery and drollery. The choppiness of the cuts in the opening “dream” sequence is bracing (and reminiscent of the dedication ceremony scene in L’age d’or somehow) but also weirdly sets the film’s fluidity of tone.

Glenn Kenny

January 10, 2015

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I would argue that Belle de Jour is indeed a beautiful film, but not because of any anesthetizing aesthetic of benevolently mindless lyricism. Nor is the film beautiful because its director’s visual style transcends its sordid subject. The beauty of Belle de Jour is the beauty of artistic rigor and adaptable intelligence.

Andrew Sarris

May 09, 1968

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What are people saying?

William R Clark's rating of the film Belle de jour
William R Clark

So effete and so raunchy at the same time.
April 20, 2019 08:34
- 5
- 0
Dorabella's rating of the film Belle de jour
Dorabella

I have a cinematic crush on Catherine Deneuve so...I am like swooon. Plus its a great female narrative and I relate to Severin. I also LOVE that they made Severin a WOMAN in this. Like, yesss. I love the exploration of sadomasochism in this film, especially through a woman. As I am sadomsochistic. Pretty in love with this film. Its def a favorite.
April 20, 2019 08:33
- 7
- 0
tomfdzv's rating of the film Belle de jour
tomfdzv

Amazing, that surrealism that buñuel ads to his movies is perfect, a confusing but great plot
March 20, 2019 14:58
- 4
- 0
El Biffo's rating of the film Belle de jour
El Biffo

One of Bunuel's finest.
May 19, 2020 10:40
- 14
- 0
Matt Pritchard's rating of the film Belle de jour
Matt Pritchard

Like a 90 minute dream sequence. Fantastic film, not very erotic for an erotic film. Catherine Deneuve shows she is both a great actress and a goddess.
March 19, 2019 00:46
- 4
- 0
Duncan Gray's rating of the film Belle de jour
Duncan Gray

One of Buneul's best! A tremendous fusion of comedy and politics, where reality and fantasy get to become the rocky chimera they always are, and half the fun is guessing what's going on in Mlle. Deneuve's head. An interestingly cheeky view of sex too, namely because it suggests that sexual desire, much like a Bunuel film, isn't meant to be understood so much as enjoyed.
January 24, 2019 17:47
- 4
- 0
dionysus67's rating of the film Belle de jour
dionysus67

Buñuel's masterful diatribe on the vicissitudes of patriarchal seeing, ingeniously doubled within Séverine's (a virginal Deneuve) own gaze of men's fantasy excursions: their libidinal articulations of a penetrating and submission-driven sexuality. The Sadean humiliation -maybe, through filmically transposing Masson's own vision of Justine- is ironically fitting for the religious bell-sounds that cut across the film.
May 05, 2020 18:10
- 6
- 0
Thomas's rating of the film Belle de jour
Thomas

Perverse and enjoyable drama of fantasy and secret desires. It is a pleasure to watch this collection of colourful characters, sketched as recognisable carictatures. Unfortunately the momentum fizzles out towards the end.
August 24, 2019 06:34
- 2
- 0