Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1967 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli
Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her afternoon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits.
Up Next in Starring Catherine Deneuve
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The Young Girls of Rochefort
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1967 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Françoise DorléacJacques Demy followed up THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and...
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Donkey Skin
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1970 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Delphine SeyrigIn this lovingly crafted, wildly eccentric adaptation of a classic French fairy tale, Jacques Demy casts Catherine Deneuve as a princess who must go into hiding as a scullery maid in order to fend o...
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A Slightly Pregnant Man
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1973 • France
In this surreal comedy from Jacques Demy, Marcello Mastroianni plays a driving school instructor who, complaining of strange discomforts, learns he is four months pregnant. A frenzy of complications, scrutiny and celebrity ensues.
