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It is possibly the best-known erotic film of modern times, perhaps the best. That's because it understands eroticism from the inside-out—understands how it exists not in sweat and skin, but in the imagination.
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Belle de Jour is one of the most famous films directed by Luis Buñuel. Released in 1967, it starred then-débutante Catherine Deneuve.
Séverine (Deneuve) looks outwardly like the perfect Housewife. Beautiful, demure, well-mannered and impeccably groomed, she is the very image of bourgeois propriety. In fact she is a masochist who likes to fantasize about being humiliated and treated like a sex object. On the recommendation of a friend, she acts out on these fantasies by becoming a part-time prostitute in an upscale brothel. Since she only turns tricks during her husband's business hours, she is given the moniker Belle de Jour, "daytime beauty".
- All Girls Want Bad Boys
- All Just a Dream: It's unclear what really happens and what just takes place in Séverine's overactive fantasy life.
- All Women Are Prudes: Subverted hard.
- Band of Brothels: Séverine's "colleagues".
- Bastard Boyfriend: Marcel.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Séverine and her fellow prostitutes.
- Covert Pervert: Séverine.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Bunuel deliberately used Deneuve's appearance as a blond ice queen to emphasize the contrast between her straight-laced persona and her real inner self.
- Fetish: Séverine's is to be tied up and sexually abused by strangers.
- Foreshadowing: Pierre reflecting upon a wheelchair. At the end of the movie, he's paraplegic.
- Gainax Ending: Not even Luis Bunuel himself was entirely sure what it meant.
- "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": Séverine's first job.
- Les Yay: The madam is obviously attracted to Séverine, though the latter feels ambivalent about it.
- The Mafia: Marcel and another client are part of it.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Marcel attempts this on Séverine's husband. Doesn't work, and he gets killed in the process.
- Riddle for the Ages: One customer shows up with a small lacquered box, the contents of which cause a prostitute to recoil in shock. We'll never know what's in it.
- Sexless Marriage
- Yandere: Marcel.