Belle Toujours (DVD)

Synopsis

In this homage to Luís Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, Manoel de Oliveira reunites the leading characters from the 1967 classic Belle de jour. Picking up from where Buñuel s erotic masterpiece left off, Michel Piccoli returns in Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours as Henri Husson older and wiser, but still every bit the sadist libertine who in the original both lusted after and callously taunted Catherine Deneuve's Séverine to the very end. What exactly did Husson whisper into the ear of her paraplegic husband?

In Belle Toujours, Oliveira s Séverine is played by Bulle Ogier, whom Piccoli's Husson first spots sitting a few rows away from him at a concert in Paris. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until Husson manages to gain her attention with the intention of revealing the secret that he alone can unfold. After years of lingering torment, Séverine is finally offered an opportunity to uncover the truth about what her husband learned or didn't learn about her during that fateful visit with Husson so many years earlier.