Belle Toujours, Manoel de Oliveira

"«BELLE TOUJOURS» ocorreu-me à ideia inesperadamente, e como tinha gosto de prestar a minha homenagem a Luís Buñuel e a Jean Claude Carrière fiquei feliz por ter encontrado o modo de o fazer, talvez o melhor, e meti mãos à obra.
De que se trata? De retomar duas das estranhas personagens do filme «Belle de Jour», e fazê-las reviver, trinta e oito anos depois, na estranheza de um segredo que só ficara na posse da personagem masculina e cujo conhecimento se tornara crucial para a personagem feminina.
Assim, passado esse tempo, voltam a encontrar-se.
Mas ela tenta por todos os meios evitá-lo.
Ele, porém, persegue-a e, ainda que contrariada, consegue detê-la face à intenção de lhe revelar o segredo que só ele lhe pode desvendar.
Marcam um encontro, um jantar, onde ela espera que tudo lhe seja revelado. Dá-se o jantar onde ela, viúva, aguarda a esperada revelação: o que ele dela dissera ao marido quando este estava mudo e paralítico por causa de um tiro que um amante dela lhe dera.

A situação é tensa e ela acaba desesperada sem poder afinal saber o que em verdade se passou.
Ele fica satisfeito no seu sadismo e no seu particular modo de se vingar da altivez dessa mulher que no fundo o desejou, mas que o seu feitio altivo impediu que ele a possuísse.

Manoel de Oliveira
Porto, 8 de Julho de 2005"
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This sly, witty work by Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira (soon to celebrate his 98th birthday) takes as its premise the idea of revisiting Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour, or at least two of its characters, marvelously played by Michel Piccoli and Bulle Ogier (in the role originated by Catherine Deneuve). Henri (Piccoli), long ago rejected by Séverine (Ogier), is now in possession of a secret which she is anxious to learn. The erotic cat-and-mouse game they play across Paris results in a delicious comedy of manners. There is also a wonderful, gracious freedom in the tribute that one major film director pays another: Oliveira captures the wry perversity of Buñuel’s late style, while bringing his own unpredictable, worldly spirit to the table.
New York film festival
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Unlike Bergman's Saraband, a three-decades-later follow-up to Scenes From a Marriage, de Oliveira's latest can't quite be labeled a sequel; instead, it's an intimate homage to Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière's 1967 masterpiece, Belle de Jour. In the opening sequence of a Parisian symphony orchestra performance, we're reintroduced to the older, balder, and still lecherous Henri Husson (Michel Piccoli) as he spots the former bourgeois wife-turned-prostitute Séverine Serizy (Bulle Ogier, replacing Catherine Deneuve as "Belle") in the crowd. Eager to reconnect and find closure to 38 years' worth of secrets, lies, and related baggage, Husson attempts to track her down following the concert, then immediately loses her in the streets of a city that de Oliveira so clearly loves and chooses to preserve with a lingering economy of shots. A breezy hour-and-ten-minutes long, this beautifully affecting film is less about these beloved characters than its aging filmmaker's wistful reminiscences of cinema itself and a long lifetime's worth of material pleasures. "I'm a different woman now," says the standoffish Séverine with conscious irony, a woman played by Ogier instead of Deneuve as both an homage to Buñuel (the actress playing the female lead in the director's That Obscure Object of Desire is replaced by another halfway through) and to underscore the idea that memories and their passing can only exist in the subjective mind; we watch the film through Husson's eyes and worldly agenda. Fans of the original will hopefully smile at the visual references to that mysteriously buzzing box, the random rooster that clucks past a hotel doorway, or the painting that faintly mirrors Deneuve's iconic over-the-shoulder naked gaze, but it's within the astute pub confessions and dinnertime silences where the magic of this wholly liberated story lies.
Premiere.com