Belle de jour - Definition and Overview

Belle de jour film poster

Belle de jour is a 1967 French film starring Catherine Deneuve. The film was directed by the late Spanish director Luis Buñuel. It is based on the 1928 novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel.

Plot

Séverine Serizy is a young, beautiful Paris housewife who has masochistic daydream fantasies about elaborate floggings and bondage. She is married to a doctor and loves him, but cannot share physical intimacy with him. A male friend mentions a high-class brothel to Séverine, and soon she secretly tries to work there during the afternoon (using the pseudonym Belle de jour). The brothel is run by Madame Anais, played by Geneviève Page. Séverine will only work up until five o'clock each day, returning to her blissfully unaware husband in the evening. Her husband, Pierre, is played by Jean Sorel.

Or is this all a fantasy? And if so, whose?

See also

• Sadism and masochism in fiction

External links

• Belle de jour review by Roger Ebert (http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/belle.html)
• Belle de jour review by Edward Guthmann - San Francisco Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1995/07/21/DD63089.DTL)