Belle de jour

film by Buñuel [1967]

Written by

Lee Pfeiffer

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Belle de jour, French film drama, released in 1967, that was director Luis Buñuel’s most commercial film and one of the most erotic movies of the 1960s, though largely devoid of nudity.

Catherine Deneuve played Séverine, a beautiful, wealthy, sheltered new bride in a socially advantageous but boring marriage. Despite indulging in a subversive fantasy life, she refuses to sleep with her husband (played by Jean Sorel). When she hears about a brothel that employs housewives to ply their skills in secret, she makes the ominous decision to fulfill her fantasies by serving as a prostitute. The film’s shocking denouement, involving an encounter between Séverine’s husband and a jealous customer, gives the story the aspect of a morality play but, in Buñuel’s mannered world of ethical fluidity, makes it no less perverse.

Belle de jour is a quasi-fantasy, and it is often difficult to discern whether the viewer is witnessing reality or scenarios of the main character’s imagining. In the film’s most famous sequence, a client shows Séverine a small box and begs her to utilize the object in their sex play, which she initially refuses to do. Moviegoers have long debated what was inside the box, but Buñuel never told. Deneuve was widely acclaimed as one of the most beautiful new actresses to emerge in 1960s cinema.