In sequelizing Luis Buñuel’s Belle De Jour, Manoel de Oliveira not only pays tribute to the master of social satire, but also provides the perfect coda to cinema’s most cynical treatise on sexual politics.
Riffing on the dual actress joke in That Obscure Object Of Desire, Bulle Ogier is cast in the Deneuve role to give greater credence to her insistence she is a different person from the sado-masochist who worked in a bordello 40 years earlier. But Michel Piccoli is convinced that a woman’s nature never changes, and he balefully pursues this enigma from his past to exact revenge.