Belle ToujoursQuel dommage!  May 17,
2007 5:33:15 PM
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.
|
 |
|
- Our critics pick the 14 producers with the fattest, meanest beats
- Steve Albini speaks
- In his bid for re-election, city councilor Stephen Murphy has collected a combustible group of allies, from Dapper to Deval
- If a third candidate crowds the 2008 presidential election, the GOP will have effectively handed the election to Hillary
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Covering all the bases with first-class Albanian and more
- Evangelicals are speaking in bubbles — and fighting God’s war on pop culture
- Lessons from the build-them-up, tear-them-down Boston firefighter backlash
- Kick him when he's down
- Peruko Ccopacatty’s fresh perspective
- Ben is back with Gone Baby Gone
- The real significance of hired guns in Iraq. Plus, combating Ann Coulter.
|
-
Contemporary Romanian cinema at the HFA
-
The big ideas get out, despite clumsy dialogue
-
Art-love tunnel vision
-
Hormones submit to dreary Order
-
No wave in sight at the Boston French Film Festival
-
Yet another mismatched-buddy pairing
-
The movie of the summer for the timid Christian paranoiacs
-
The tars are adrift in Ocean’s Thirteen
-
Lacerating Harold Pinter at the Harvard Film Archive
|
- Resolutely weird
- On a diabetic throne
- Michael Caine remaking Michael Caine
- The Honda Accord of movies
- Unintentional sports comedy
- Haunting agony and angst
- Hoary high-camp clichés
- Another African-American life lesson
- Wry desperation in Buenos Aires
- Ben is back with Gone Baby Gone
|
|
|
|