Belle de Jour | 
 enlarge | Director: Luis Bunuel
Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page, Pierre Clementi
Studio: Miramax
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $11.96
You Save: $8.03 (40%)
New (42) Used (11) Collectible (3) from $11.96
Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 14427
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 101
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.6
MPN: 2473903
ISBN: 0788833391
UPC: 786936169881
EAN: 9780788833397
ASIN: B00005JKP9
Theatrical Release Date: 1967
Release Date: January 22, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com essential video
A young Paris housewife, Severine, grows bored with her stable husband. When she learns of the presence of a high-class brothel in her neighborhood, she quietly goes to work there--but only during the day, until five o'clock in the afternoon. This sublime 1967 film is one of the latter-day masterpieces of the Spanish-born director Luis Bunuel, whose career forms one of the greatest and boldest arcs in cinema. By the time of Belle de jour, Bunuel had become almost completely deadpan in his style, which not only leaves the motivation of Severine a mystery (despite a few flashbacks to degradations of her youth), but also casts the entire plot in doubt. An old surrealist from the 1920s (when his first classic, Un chien andalou, was made in collaboration with Salvador Dali), Bunuel suggests that what we see may be real, or simply Severine's imagination. Because he was the least pretentious of directors, Bunuel keeps his material playful, wicked, yet cutting. As Severine, the impossibly lovely Catherine Deneuve uses her cool demeanor to great effect--she never breaks her deadpan, either. In 1995, after having been out of official circulation for years, Belle de Jour was re-released in America and became an unexpected art-house hit. --Robert Horton
Description
Widely acclaimed as a motion picture masterpiece, BELLE DE JOUR is an erotically charged tale of deceit and desire! Beautiful Catherine Deneuve (INDOCHINE) stars as Severine, a perfect young housewife ... who leads a shocking double life. What her loving husband Pierre doesn't know is that by day she's a high-priced prostitute! But when the dangerous obsession of a customer forces her terrible secrets out into the open, Pierre must decide whether to reject her for what she has done ... or accept her for who she is! Now available on video for the first time, the stunning erotic intrigue of BELLE DE JOUR will both captivate and entertain!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 La Belle France et La Belle Deneuve December 19, 2008
Despite an impression of slight roughness in the presentation of this film and perhaps because of an understated quality, Belle De Jour makes an impact that lasts. The premise of the film - a housewife who decides to live out fantasies and add drama and adventure to her daily life by working as a prostitute during the day when her husband is at work - shot like a lightning bolt in people's consciousness when the film came out. Nowadays that idea, with so many articles in magazines, is not so shocking, but the film remains successful and fascinating partly because Deneuve's beauty and cool demeanor mesmerizes in ways that aren't fully explainable. The term Belle De Jour is a play on belle de nuit or femme de nuit. A flower whose beauty manifests during the day has obvious connotations.Translator's Kiss
Magnifique December 4, 2008
Belle De Jour is one of the best French films of all time (and indeed one of the best films, period). Deneuve, captured at the peak of her remarkable physical beauty, gives arguably her finest "ice queen" performance as a woman leading a bizarre double life where fantasy and reality begin to blend into one. The film's frank (and often humorous) portrayal of lust, infidelity, and madness manages to alternately amuse and disturb the viewer. A classic that is worth owning and revisiting many times.
 Overrated September 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There was something about the 1960s that brought out a playfulness in filmmakers which allowed them to not have to condescend to audiences and wrap up every little aspect of the film in a neat little bow. When the films' techniques and narrative strengths worked, as in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, or Ingmar Bergman's Persona, the result was a great film. When neither worked, the result was a pretentious mess, like Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby or Luis Bunuel's Belle De Jour- his 1967 foray into color film, based upon the same titled novel of Joseph Kessler, released in 1928.
The film has been described as an `erotic masterpiece,' but forty years later one is left with a film that has so little sex in it that it could pass as a PG film if released today, as well as lacking all eros. Mild sex scenes are not, by definition, eros, and it's difficult to believe that anyone watching this film could have been shocked, much less aroused by a single scene in it. Yes, young Catherine Deneuve, as bored bourgeois hausfrau Severine Serizy, is her typical gorgeous self, but having seen her in several of her later roles, plus her featured role in Roman Polanski's Repulsion, I seriously must question whether she could really act. In Polanski's film, she plays a neurotic, sexually stifled woman who sleepwalks through her descent to murderess, after what was likely a childhood of sexual abuse. Similarly, her character of Severine was sexually abused (seen through flashbacks, and after which she refuses communion), but unlike the Repulsion heroine/villain, is not repulsed by raw sex, but attracted to the filthy sadomasochistic aspects of it.... Had Bergman made this film it would have been far subtler and better. That Alfred Hitchcock, by contrast, loved this film, says a lot, for his own films were equally dependent upon hamhanded views of sexuality, and most are equally outdated, as well, for that very reason. Apologists for the film claim that it allows viewers to bring their own thoughts and experiences into the film. Well, most films do, so that's not a great argument. Belle De Jour fails for the opposite reason; it lacks a core- emotionally, philosophically, and technically, masquing it all with claims of Surrealism- that label used to cover and alibi for all manner of bad art.
In short, this film does not even walk the walk, and Bunuel is not in a league with such filmmakers as Werner Herzog nor Antonioni, as far as symbolism goes. Belle De Jour may have titillated audiences four decades ago, but today it simply plays out as a wan and silly- as well as poorly wrought, exploration of a dull woman's sexual life, and how that keeps her deluded and miserable. One need not pay to see such, when a trip to the local supermarket can give you dozens of more interesting female subjects to choose from.
Great movie but get the Region 2 DVD, it's worth it! August 13, 2008
I've seen both versions and although I have to watch my Region 2 DVD on my computer (all you need is to download a program like AnyDVD that allows you to watch other region DVDs), it's worth it. 16:9 anamorphic, great sound, clear picture and it's an anniversary edition with a booklet and a beautiful format. You can get it from Amazon UK. For those of you who aren't happy with the Region 1 version.
As for the movie itself, I just have to say I love Bunuel's dialogues. I have Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie as well and it follows along the same lines. Witty dialogue, very amusing how he manages to make the characters stand out but at the same time they're very comical and heavy topics are lightened up somewhat through the way he works around them.
Brilliant filmmaker. Absolutely brilliant.
The gap between fantasy and reality in female desire... August 7, 2008
Deneuve plays Severine Serizy, a bored middle-class woman who never slept with her handsome husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). She eventually adopts a double life on weekday afternoons as a hooker... Here she explores the depths of her desires with her amazing sexual inhibitions... Although the film resolves around her goings-on at a high-class brothel, real nudity and sex are never shown...
"Belle de Jour" may seem one of the most mysterious, poetic, and provoking films ever made... Producing a body of work unparalleled in its wealth of meaning and its ability to surprise and shock, Bunuel leads us into a new world arousing wonder and astonishment, depravity and pleasure, weird and entertaining...
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