
Belle de Jour (18)
Director: Luis Bunuel
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page
France / Italy, 1967, 1 hour 41 minutes, subtitles
Tuesday 8 April 2.00pm
The Courtyard Hereford

Through its dramatic collision between fantasy and reality, between free sexual expression and respectable bourgeois values, this elegant and erotic masterpiece holds a hypnotic grip on audiences. Deneuve plays the glacially beautiful, sexually unfulfilled, bored housewife Severine, who indulges her fantasies when she takes a day job in a brothel. An amoral comedy that is remarkably discrete and chaste given its potentially sensationalist subject, this is undoubtedly Bunuel's most accessible film.
"one of the greatest of directors simply because of the expressive mastery of his films" David Thomson
This film will be introduced by Graeme Hobbs, whose many reviews and fortnightly podcasts on film can be found at MovieMail. Sponsored by MovieMail