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 Written by Jean-Claude Carrière
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Le grand amour
Directed by Pierre Etaix • 1969 • France
Despite having a loving and patient wife at home, a good-natured suit-and-tie man, played by writer-director Pierre Etaix, finds himself hopelessly attracted to his gorgeous new secretary in this gently satirical tale of temptation. From this simple, stan...
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The Phantom of Liberty
Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1974 • France
Starring Michel Piccoli, Jean-Claude Brialy, Monica VittiBourgeois convention is demolished in Luis Buñuel’s surrealist gem THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals ...
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That Obscure Object of Desire
Directed by Luis Buñuel • 1977 • France
Starring Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet, Angela MolinaLuis Buñuel’s final film explodes with eroticism, bringing full circle the director’s lifelong preoccupation with the darker side of desire. Buñuel regular Fernando Rey plays Mathieu, an urbane widower, ...
