That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) - Luis Buñuel
Related: European cinema - surrealist cinema - film - Luis Buñuel - 1977
Adapted from: La Femme et le Pantin/The She Devils (1898) - Pierre Louys
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) - Luis Buñuel
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Description
Luis 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, tortured by his lust for the elusive Conchita. With subversive flare, Buñuel uses two different actresses in the lead- Carole Bouquet, a sophisticated French beauty, and Angela Molina, a Spanish coquette. Drawn from Pierre Louÿs' 1898 novel, "La Femme et le Pantin," That Obscure Object of Desire is a dizzying game of sexual politics punctuated by a terror that harkens back to Buñuel's brilliant surrealistic beginnings.
The story of Object is based on a popular erotic novel by one Pierry Louys. Its eroticism has not prevented the book from being filmed several times. Von Sternberg did an adaptation called The Devil is a Woman, with Marlene Dietrich, and Brigette Bardot appeared in one as well. But the adaptation that Buñuel was most likely to have seen was a silent version by Jacques de Baroncelli in 1929 — several of the scenes in Baroncelli's version are almost exactly re-created in Buñuel's some 50 years later. Louys's tale is about sexual frustration, which fits in perfectly with Buñuel's own themes, as well as his tendency to disrupt conventional narrative. The story is about woman as temptress and controller of men through her sexuality. Conchita starts out as a serf but soon almost becomes the master. She never succumbs to the temptation of giving her slave Mathieu any satisfaction, and she thinks nothing of making love to a younger, more appealing man right in front of him. Equally so, Buñuel never makes consessions to his viewers, altering a film's "reality" at will, yet seducing the viewer with ravishing images.--D.K Holm
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