"Luis Buñuel's particular combination of religion, decay, and morbid eroticism has never been my absolutely favorite kind of cinema...But Belle de Jour...is a really beautiful movie, and somehow, letting the color in--this is Buñuel's first color film--has changed the emotional quality of his obsessions in a completely unpredictable way." -- The New York Times

"...Belle de Jour is a fitting capstone to the curious career of an unpopular but near-legendary film maker whose favorite themes have been anticlericalism, madness, festishist fantasies and the wilder frontiers of sex...Since other directors have long since surpassed Buñuel when it comes to on-screen presentation of sex, most audiences will not find anything visually shocking about Belle de Jour. They will find instead a cumulative mystery: What is really happening and what is not?...Fantasy, he seems to be saying, is nothing but the human dimension of reality that makes life tolerable, and sometimes even fun. If this is his message, Buñuel dresses it up in Belle de Jour with unaccustomed cinematic smoothness. Instead of the brutal bludgeoning in black-and-white that audiences have come to expect from such Buñuel classics as Viridiana (1961) or Los Olvidados (1950), Belle de Jour is composed in color with an eye to elegance that is well suited to the cool beauty of Deneuve...Deneuve is well on her way to becoming a serious star." -- Time magazine

"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." - Roger Ebert

"...wry and disturbing tale of a virginal newlywed who works the day shift in a high-class Parisian brothel, unbeknownst to her patient husband. Buñuel's straight-faced treatment of shocking subject matter belies the sharp wit of his script...Deneuve's finest, most enigmatic performance." -- Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide

"Catherine Deneuve is at her iciest as the perverse Séverine, a Parisian housewife whose double life as a prostitute allows her to explore the masochistic fantasies that fill her dreams. Buñuel...easily travels between Séverine's real and fantasy worlds, presenting both with equal clarity...The director may have been ahead of his time, but he displays no more compassion for his characters than a psycho killer shows for his victims. Buñuel, who adapted the screenplay from Jospeh Kessel's 1928 novel, does give the audience a choice of endings. The happy one is obviously another of Séverine's fantasies. Belle seems the work of a beast." - The Washington Post

AWARDS AND HONORS

Belle de Jour won the Golden Lion - the grand prize - at the 1967 Venice Film Festival.

Catherine Deneuve received a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Actress.

Belle de Jour won the Best Film of 1967 honors from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume