Beauty of the Day

Séverine is a wealthy but bored housewife. Despite her love for her husband, Pierre, she is unable to be intimate with him. Her sexual life is confined to elaborate fantasies of domination and sadomasochism. After learning about a friend currently working as a prostitute, Séverine decides to escape her routine and satisfy her desires by taking afternoon shifts at Madame Anaïs' brothel. Set in a limbo between dreams and reality, this film sees Buñuel delve into the depths of human consciousness on a journey free from the repression that characterises the moral values of bourgeois society.

Duration: 100’
Production year: 1967
Country: FR, IT
Language: FR Subtitles: PT

Venice Film Festival 1967 – Golden Lion, Pasinetti Award
Cannes Film Festival 2017 – Cannes Classics Official Selection

01:39

Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel was born in 1900, in Spain, and died in 1983, in Mexico. He studied philosophy at the University of Madrid, where he befriended Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dalí. The trio made up the core of the Spanish surrealist movement. In 1925, Buñuel moved to Paris, where he studied cinema under the tutelage of Jean Epstein. Four years later, with Dalí, Buñuel directed Un Chien Andalou and, the following year, L’âge d’or, films in which he affirmed his critical and surrealist vein. With difficulties in finding work after his attacks on the Catholic Church in L’âge d’or, Buñuel went to Mexico, where he filmed human melodramas. Los olvidados (1950) earned him the Award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. His return to Europe, a few years later, marked his return to surrealism and social and political satire. Films such as Viridiana (1961), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; El ángel exterminador (1962); Belle de jour (1967), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival; and Cet obscur objet du désir (1977) helped establish Buñuel’s reputation as the father of cinematic surrealism and one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. His surreal and critical body of work focuses on the bourgeoisie and the Church.

Original title: Belle de Jour

Luis Buñuel

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