belle de jour Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A big revelation hit the wire yesterday. Belle de Jour -- a writer named after the film by Luis Buñuel -- came out of the literary closet. She's the British woman who anonymously blogged about her time as a London call girl, wrote books about her experiences, and saw them morphed into television form with the Billie Piper series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Her name is Dr. Brooke Magnanti, and as the Times describes: "Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants." Not quite what you were expecting, eh? Over the years, many have sworn that she couldn't be real. She must be a figment of some man's imagination, writing to make sex work look glamorous and ease the mind of lonely types who buy their sexual gratification. But here she is, 100% woman, 100% real, adept not only at the written word, but also medical pursuits.

On the one hand, I worry that this will inspire Hollywood towards a new torrent of prostitution-laced fare, adding to a business that's already over-saturated as if every Jane, Sue, and Mary have a side gig giving sex for cash. The biz already has more than enough of it, and they really don't need extra encouragement. On the other hand, I find myself enamored with her guts and how perfectly she challenges assumptions on sexuality, intelligence, and artistic flair. Naturally, this made me think about the women of film who defy convention.

The Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, 98 years old as of this writing, is a walking bit of cinema history. Born in Oporto (where they make port wine) he reportedly worked on a film as early as 1928 and made his official directorial debut in 1931 with a short documentary, Working on the Douro River. Even though Hollywood had implemented sound by then, many other countries had not. And so Oliveira carries the distinction of being not only the oldest movie director still active, but also the only movie director to have begun in the silent era. In Europe, he's considered a master, with several films already in the canon. Despite all this, only two of Oliveira's films have received any kind of regular distribution in the United States, I'm Going Home (2002), which I consider a masterpiece, and the slightly more problematic, but still excellent A Talking Picture (2004). A third, Belle Toujours, opened briefly this summer in New York but has already gone.

Oliveira has made the majority of his films -- more than thirty of them -- since 1979, when he was already past seventy. Because of this, his films tend to be patient and contemplative, or to Western audiences, just plain "slow." He's like an old man driving a car in front of you; perhaps he's keeping us from getting to our destination faster, but if we could only see things from his point of view, maybe we could enjoy the drive a little more. He's learned how to really stop and appreciate things and he has pretty much earned the right to make any movie he feels like making. So he sets his sights on a sort of sequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967), which, in other hands, would have been a travesty. And though it reunites two of the main characters from that masterpiece, it actually turns out to be more of a tribute or an epilogue than a sequel.

I've been reading a lot of chatter on films screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and, before I started reading said chatter, I chattered about it with a Toronto resident/attendee, in order to gain a better understanding of what was being shown this year, as well to guide my friend into seeing and reporting on films that particularly interest me.

Though I can't say I recommend seeing it, I was quite intrigued to read an article regarding Manoel de Oliveira's sequel to Bunuel's Belle de Jour, titled Belle Toujours (Beautiful Every Day). At first, I thought, does this movie actually exist? How come nobody's mentioned it? Actually, Oliveira himself has mentioned it - he wrote his own summary of the film on IMDb. For those interested, it premieres in Toronto on September 13, and then again on the 15th.

Basically, the film revisits the life of one of Severine's friends, Henri (Deneuve is no longer Severine, but Henri is played, again, by Michel Piccoli, who has aged into a kind of soft, grandfatherly-looking sadist). In the original, Henri relentlessly stalked Severine -- looking to consummate some adulterous rendevous, until he discovered her secret life as a whore. Years later, Henri runs into Severine by chance at a Dvorak concert, and the pursuit begins anew. I'm intrigued to know the purpose of this pursuit, as I always thought he gave up on her in Belle de Jour because the power he'd hold over her is the power to reveal her secret. But it's been a while since I've seen the original.