Belle toujours

It's always nice to fallow the evolution of some characters through the years from films to films. You have the impression to see old friends again after a long separation. But there, the separation was really very long, and years go by, everyone got old and tired. All you got at the end of this meeting is the sad feeling that 38 years after having lost contact, it was quite useless to meet again, for you don't have anything to say to this characters anymore.

In 1967, Louis Bunuel filmed a terrible story of a perverse woman beautifully played by Catherine Deneuve. 38 years later, Michel Piccoli, who played in the original movie a friend of Deneuve's husband, assists to a endlessly concert of Dvorak, where he sees the ex-Bunuel character. In old time's sake, he'll want to invite her to diner, but she doesn't really have a nice souvenir of their relationship. And she claims that time changes her a lot : and indeed, Severine, formerly known as Caterine Deneuve, has now become Bulle Augier (but she's quite credible in old-young Deneuve).

It's really sad to see that in this false sequel the trouble, the wit and the intelligence of Bunuel are replaced by a boring feeling and an excessive slow motion impression. Beside a tasteful mute diner scene between the two mythical characters, even the most passionate cinephile will have trouble to find anything consistent in this repetitive style exercise. He'll just be surprised in front of this plain interpretation of "Belle de jour", and be amazed by the incoherences. Henry Husson bought for example Severine the strange box a mysterious Asian character brought when he met her years ago : but how can he know this kind of details, when he was merely an external observer of her life ?

No wonder why Catherine Deneuve run away in front of this inconsistence and quite lazy movie. But man can wonder why the critics praise this movie when "Belle Toujours" is obviously a minor piece in Oliveira's impressive filmography.

But not succeeding anyway. Buñuel was a genius and de Oliveira only a very talented movie director. A parenthesis to say that for you to understand fully this movie you must have seen Buñuel's movie "Belle de Jour" which dates from the sixties of last century. This movie now aspires (as some kind of homage to Buñuel's work) to be some kind of continuation of the latter but a feeble one indeed. Those who have seen Buñuel's movie probably will remember the story: a beautiful woman (Catherine Deneuve then) who loves her husband has however some masochist tendency which pulls her to prostitute herself in a luxury brothel. Buñuel tells this story brilliantly in images and dialogues diving deeply in the arcana of the human soul. De Oliveira's movie profits (or tries to profit) from that story by concocting a supposed not very meaningful end to it (which becomes a poor open end after all). The story of the movie we are reviewing now is based in the encounter many years later of the woman of the first movie (Bulle Ogier now who resembles Catherine Deneuve as much as a screech-owl resembles a dove)and a close friend (Michel Piccoli) of her and her (now already deceased) husband, who tries to convince her to have dinner with him in a private room in a posh restaurant by promising to tell her if he had or not told her husband at the time of the events above mentioned, about her behaviour also above described. This has not much interest in itself as the continuation of Buñuel's story to be given as the climax in de Oliveira's movie. To the movie's credit however we may refer the excellent performance of Michel Piccoli, a few nice images of Paris and some beautiful interiors and visual details and the smooth visual development of the story showing the de Oliveira's real talent in what regards movie's and actor's direction. And that's all.

I remember reading somewhere that Oliveira's film works as a symbol of the impossible reconciliation between past and present, between cinema (with its passion for manipulation) and reality (with its relentless curiosity for the truth), two dimensions that clash irremediably in modern times.

Personally, I found this to be a excellent comedy, full of delicious winks to symbolic surrealism (the Joan of arc statue, the rooster scene!), a mayor work in Oliveiras impressive catalog and a proper tribute to Buñuel's work. It's a bit sad that it has been terribly underrated by "major" critics around the globe (Cahiers, etc.) *Taken from a comment I made to filmref.com

First: slow down. Second: turn of the phone. Third: relax. Now you're ready for a treat. Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours (2006) is a sequel in homage to Belle de Jour (1967), the classic film from Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière. Certainly Belle Toujours is diverting and can stand alone; but, when it follows on the heels of Belle de Jour, so that the two films are taken together, then it finds its full stride. Something magical happens. Michel Piccoli returns as "Mr. Husson" (un drôle de type), as Bulle Ogier replaces - who else could? - the otherwise irreplaceable Catherine Deneuve as "Séverine" (la putain-penitent, forty years on). It works very well. Alone, Oliveira's little gem comes in around 60 minutes. If watched immediately after Buñuel's film, the two taken together require 2 hours and 40 minutes. Enjoy. 8/10 plays it safe.

Running just a little over an hour in length, "Belle Toujours" is Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira's homage to "Belle De Jour," the classic French film from the 1960s, written and directed by Luis Bunuel. The original featured Catherine Deneuve as a beautiful bored housewife with masochistic fantasies who whiles away her afternoons working as a prostitute in a Paris brothel. In the "sequel," Michel Piccoli returns as Henri Husson, the friend who first suggested the brothel to Severine, and who, all these years later, has decided to have a rendezvous with the woman.

Though Piccoli reprises his role from the first movie, Severine is played by a different actress (Bulle Oglier), a casting imbalance that plays havoc with the symmetry of the piece. At least for "A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later," yet another misguided attempt at recapturing the magic of an earlier film, both Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant showed up for the reunion - though one can certainly sympathize with Deneuve's reluctance to lend her talents to this film, which is smug, self-indulgent, talky and inert, and does nothing to enhance one's memory of the original work (happily, the utter innocuousness of the film also prevents it from HARMING that memory as well).

Henri basically spends the first two-thirds of the movie vainly trying to "connect" with Severine (they keep just missing one another, like in one of those Feydeau bedroom farces), and the last third dining with her in an opulent private room where they talk at length about the past and she tries to convince him that she's a "different" woman from the one he knew before - which should be perfectly obvious to anyone who remembers Catherine Deneuve. Then it all culminates in a fizzle-out ending, and we're left dumbfounded and openmouthed, wondering what the purpose for any of it could possibly have been.

One thing, however, is certain: "Belle Toujours" is a complete waste of time and film.