MOVIE SCREENING: Belle Du Jour February 8, 2007

"Belle Du Jour" dramatizes the collision between depravity and elegance, one of the favorite themes of director Luis Buñuel. Catherine Deneuve stars as a wealthy but bored newlywed, eager to taste life to the fullest. She seemingly gets her wish early in the film when she is kidnapped, tied to a tree, and gang-raped. It turns out that this is only a daydream, but her subsequent visits to a neighboring brothel, where she offers her services, certainly seem to be real. This illusion/reality dichotomy extends to the final scenes, in which we are offered two possible endings. Thanks to a question of copyright and ownership, Belle de jour disappeared from view shortly after its 1967 release, not even resurfacing on videotape. When it was re-issued theatrically in 1994, many critics placed the perplexing but mesmerizing film on their lists of that year's best films.

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