Belle De Jour

1967, one of Bunuel and indeed world cinema's most famous films, starring Catherine Deneuve. It is, of course, a masterpiece.
The direction is similar to 'Diary Of A Chambermaid' (though differs in its fine interiors, which signals a wider attack on the bourgeois culture and also an increasing sense of otherworldliness) those cool long takes, the camaera focussing in to emphasise emotion, the study of the human face and also of detachment. The face is very important here; Deneuve's incredible performance of a cold, almost china doll like simplicity and placidity is frankly stunning. Here we have real parralels to Bresson; the underacting and slight fakeness of the entire excercise gives the whole piece a distracted air, one that in fact we are not currently able to express.
As far as the story, we have a fascination expression of how fantasy and desire can break through, can fail to be suppressed, can be expressed. Explored in a variety of ways, the black dress of mourning, the use of certain dress blending into the background (exactly as in 'Chambermaid'). The ritualised repitions also signal an access to the subconscious, as do the dream tropes, and their occassional entry into reality. The almost deadpan introduction of these adds an element of understanding and connection that overexcited montage or set dressing could lose.
A word about the sound; Bunuel obviously does not do non-diagetic, which saves his tales of mania and sexual obsession, sublmity, becoming overheated. Indeed, his cool and detached direction means there is a disonance between subject and form, perhaps the only true way to express his hysterical subject.
Another film with tangles that can't be unmade, a film deserving as many viewings as possible. We have entered the waves, but they still go past us.