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Reviews

Belle Toujours

Quel dommage!

By MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 17, 2007

2.0 Stars

BELLE DE JOUR: Warmly Parisian, but still a disapointment.

Manoel de Oliveira made this long-range sequel to Buñuel’s 1967 fetish classic Belle de jour — can you imagine a less Buñuelian filmmaker, Iberian roots or no? Michel Piccoli returns, 38 years older, as the sadistic family friend of the masochistic-wife-turned-prostitute. (The Catherine Deneuve role is now played by Bulle Ogier; Deneuve, no stranger to Oliveira’s corpus, must have been busy.) In an ironic, warmly Parisian, but also arguably extraneous play on the first film (remember, Oliveira was 98 last year, only eight years the long-gone Buñuel’s junior), Piccoli’s craggy libertine stalks the disinterested woman and tempts her with a tempting mystery — what was whispered into an ear in the first film, an enigma Buñuel would’ve been appalled that anyone solve.

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Topics: Reviews , Catherine Deneuve, Manoel de Oliveira, Michel Piccoli, More

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