That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) - Luis Buñuel

With this movie comes the outcome, the corollary to which is most likely the most important spanish film career, ends with this film the oeuvre of the genius of Aragon, Luis Buñuel puts an end to his cinematic journey with this remarkable feature. All the way traveled by the filmmaker, all his evolution reaches here the culmination, Buñuel would not direct a film again, many of his lifelong topics, his obsessions were naturally contained here, keeps the constants of the final stage of his artistic career, that is, being a scriptwriter, to work with his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, both inspired in a literary work by Pierre Louÿs, which narrates the bizarre adventures of a middle-aged man who falls desperately  in love to his young and attractive maid, to the point of obsessing with her, but, by never consummating this overflowing passion, the individual loses his dignity, being prey to the whims and humiliations of which the girl makes him an object. Memorable film, which meant the farewell of one of the greatest surrealist filmmakers, the initiator of that current actually, a referential european director, who remains coherent and faithful until the last moment with his main artistic edges, the greatest spanish filmmaker directed for the last time.

                   

We see Mathieu (Fernando Rey), buy a train ticket from Spain to Paris, board his transport, but before leaving, he throws a bucket with water to a girl (Carole Bouquet). It awakens the curiosity of his traveling companions, among them another woman (Milena Vukotic), and a dwarf professor of psychology (Piéral), to whom he explains why he did that. Remember that he traveled to visit his cousin Edouard (Julien Bertheau), where he meets the servant Conchita, the initial female. He tries to woo her (now it's Ángela Molina), but she leaves the next day. Some time later, he finds her again, arrives at her house, where lives precariously with her mother, Encarnación (María Asquerino), and soon gives them money to help them. He often repeats his visits, sees her practicing andalusian dances, and suddenly, Conchita leaves again. Mathieu lives with his butler, Martin (André Weber), finds her again, they live together, but she, claiming to be a virgin, does not agree to the sexual act, despairs Mathieu, and when he discovers that she got another man into his house, throw both out. Martin listens to his laments, again he finds her, outside Paris already, he goes to see her work, she dances naked for some tourists. Mathieu suffers more humiliations, hits her, memories are over, she, also on the train, now throws a bucket of water on him. In the end, they both go together.

This is how the last film of the spanish director ends, a genuine reference to iberian art cinema, unlike so many other contemporary directors, countrymen  of his, certainly at a large distance from someone who has been influence for them, and many other filmmakers, a director whose absence does not seem to have found a worthy successor yet. In this, his corollary film, the master of surrealism seems to have finally satiated his dreamlike appetite, now he leaves aside the world of dreaming, delirious fantasy, absurdities and contradictions appreciated in the two previous exercises, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974), replaced now with a conventional, linear narrative, and this linearity will not be broken, a somewhat more formal presentation, but which would seem to imply the final form of a mature, aged master, who does not take pleasure in telling one delirium after another anymore. Now we observe, again, and in a repeated manner, one of the figures he exhibited at the end of his career, that is, terrorism, terrorist attacks that we had already seen in the two previous films mentioned above, apparently a late obsession in his career, to the point that this final explosion is a leitmotiv of the explosion of the attack that we appreciate at the beginning of the film; that image, that fire, is what closes a whole filmography. Similarly, as in Belle de jour (1967), we see the detail of the feet, another element always buñuelian, the feet of Mathieu going up a stair, in a very obvious insinuation, almost an echo of what was seen in Catherine Deneuve and the snatched film about the double life of an aristocrat unsatisfied of her marital life. Again the subject of jealousy appears, although not in the central plane, as it was in Tristana (1970), now one of the themes is jealousy and impotence before a woman who simply has fun and relax playing with a man who knows obsessed with her body. We also have the detail of the box, observed from the filmic beginning of the filmmaker, with the delirious Un Chien Andalou (1929), and that we would see repeatedly in his films, as in, just to give an example, again Belle de jour; in his cinematic peroration, the filmmaker collects some of his obsessions, and finally that little box, one of the most mysterious buñuelian elements, is open, revealing some trinkets of no importance. The director said at some point that he himself did not know what was inside, and in his final picture, the mystery is over.

The last image of a Buñuel film.

One of the most fascinating details of the film, and mysterious at the same time, undoubtedly is the use of the two actresses to interpret Conchita, and it is remarkable that since the first sequences appear both women, being the first to flow the french Bouquet, being soaked when following the train where Mathieu goes. But it does not take long to appear the spanish Molina, invested as a servant, in the past, it is certainly indistinct the use of one and another actress, it is uncertain the accurate use, the reasons for one or another interpreter. There remains in the mystery the real origin and mechanics of the resource of Buñuel of the two females to interpret Conchita, it does not seem to be something easy to explain, as if a woman embodies the most sexually charged parts, and the other the most moderate or cold parts; nor is it the case that one interprets a part of the film, and the other actress is in charge of a second part, where the character undergoes a substantial change -those circumstances would have been probably more suitable for Tristana, even the director refers in an interview that, years later, he would have liked to apply this interpretive principle in that film-, and the change of woman highlights that variation. With singular and abrupt arbitrariness the director changes from one actress to another, both women appear indistinctly, their incursions on the screen merge as indivisible braid, making it really complex to notice the intentions of the filmmaker in that regard; even relying on testimonies from those involved in the filming, co-scriptwriter, production assistant, other actors, the source, nature and mechanics of the resource's operation are not fully clarified. Buñuel said that it was simply an incidental detail, something unplanned and spontaneous, an explanation that, in one way or another, does not quite convince. What we do know for sure is that the actress originally selected to play Conchita was Maria Schneider, this as a result of the international success of Bertolucci's The Last Tango in Paris (1972), an election that ended up being unsuccessful, and Buñuel states that he proposed, almost without wanting, to Serge Silberman the possibility of using two actresses, a suggestion that convinced the producer; once again, this is the aragonese version. Anyway, on the one hand we have Molina, fiery, fervid, hispanic, in front of the cold and more hieratic Bouquet, one blonde, red, the other brunette; one more sophisticated and distant, the other more visceral and popular, as it is Molina, naturally, a tribute from the director to his land at the end of his career, dancing, speaking spanish, the hispanic vein, Andalusia, runs through her and her fiery nature. Curiously, even the journey that Mathieu undertakes is from Spain to France, the two nations from which the actresses who incarnate the object of desire come from.














We find the filmic narrative structured in flashback, a narrative resource quite unusual in the filmmaker, not seen in his filmography the way in which the main core is approached as a glance backwards by the protagonist, constituting this a substantial difference with his two previous exercises already mentioned, diametrically opposed in their narrative structuring. We can also mention how unusually colorful his palette is, its chromatic amplitude, especially in exteriors, short but beautiful sequences where that range of colors, its framings, and the composition of its frames, as well as the movement of the camera at those moments, they turn those succinct sequences in some of the most appreciable aesthetic samples of the director. In that sense, the camera is shown more accurate than in other opportunities, with greater determination following the actions of the characters, but also making approximations, zooms to get closer to the protagonists' close-ups, intensifying the representations, it is certainly a more expressive camera, which introduces us more effectively into the characters. The title is perfect for the feature film, the female is certainly a dark object of desire, unattainable obsessive object, indecipherable, distant, ungraspable for her admirer. According to the aforementioned, it is enough to see the cinematographic work of Buñuel to realize that one of the main constants in his cinema is frustration, frustration in different varieties, the amour fou not consummated in The Golden Age (1930), the dinner of the aristocrats that is never given, first in The Exterminating Angel (1962), and later in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Confessively, frustration was one of his eternal obsessions, now we will see the nth and maximum frustration, now more addressed and shaped than ever, in the form of sexual frustration of the mature man; by the way, eroticism -another of his eternal topics- and frustration, two of his great themes, merge now. In his final, the master amalgamates both obsessions, naturally spiced with his other particular winks. So, for example we have the symbol of chastity trousers, the complete film can be condensed in that image, that figure, all the martyrdom, all the frustration is printed, it is summarized in that insurmountable impediment, it is the obsession that will never be consumed. Also flows the final detail of the bloodstains, bloodstains that appear at the beginning, when Mathieu asks for Conchita to his butler Martin, then when she is hit by him, and appears again at the end, when he observes through a showcase a woman embroidering, sewing a cloth, again, bloodied. Perhaps it can be interpreted as a symbol, an image referring to Conchita's virginity, the virginal bleeding of a sexual purity that she always claimed, but given her behavior, her chastity ends up being a tremendous enigma. In Buñuel's farewell to the cinema, misogyny looms, citing philosophers the butler says that, if you are going to meet a woman, you should not forget the whip, or stick; it is defined as an obstacle to the total evolution of man, rarely so exemplarily impressed his idea. We have the alter ego of the filmmaker, at the end of his career, unquestionably Fernando Rey becomes his fetish actor, effectively his acting alter ego, now we see him subjected to the whims and dalliances of the hot young girl, frustrated, humiliated, sobs like a child before the weathervane and indecipherable Conchita, who with his chastity pants, strips him of all his dignity, of all his virility. As it was said, surrealism now leaves room for new obsessions, one of the few surreal elements is the detail of the piglet, the pig baby, wrapped in a way like a real human baby, carried by a woman, and treated with naturalness by everyone. It is curious to see that the film is not seen at times as closure to his career, but as a link that could have been continued in that long chain that was his film career. Buñuel says goodbye to the cinema, one of the great luminaries of the European seventh art went out, his loyal Fernando Rey, Milena Vukotic, Julien Bertheau, and even Muni appear briefly; of course, others were missing, his great friend Michel Piccoli comes to mind, but the filmmaker follows the line of the end of his career. Thus ends a brilliant oeuvre, the filmography of probably the greatest spanish filmmaker, a place that can be discussed with Segundo de Chomón, or Luis García Berlanga, but in any case to this group belongs Buñuel, to the greatest, influence of other masters such as Víctor Erice or Carlos Saura. Buñuel would die six years after the release of this film, the human disappeared, but his legacy remains forever, appreciate his art, his cinema, is a pleasure that we can access as simply as appreciating some of his remarkable features. Thanks to the master.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) - Luis Buñuel

Buñuel's latest film triad, which begins with the film now commented, forms a triptych among the best known by the filmmaker, the twilight of the director, with which he would reach the final shape in the long evolution of his cinematographic style. In this opportunity Buñuel is responsible for the development of the script, himself with the collaboration, of course, of his ever loyal Jean-Claude Carrière, a script that ran for Best Original Screenplay in the Oscars of that year, a film that won the statuette for Best Foreign Film, probably the most internationally awarded work and one of the most widely disseminated. Vigorous surrealism flows throughout the film, in which again uses the filmmaker a fractured narrative structure in which he combines indiscriminately and in a way almost impossible to discern, reality and dream, fantasy and reality, memories or present. Always being loyal to his winks, to his figures, to his language, presents to us the filmmaker the simple story of a group of bourgeois who, due to real or unreal reasons, can not hold a dinner, and the film will be simply the journey through these delirious adventures. An already completely settled again in Europe Buñuel, with all the freedom and amplitude of resources in french soil, already working with his final acting team, presents one of his most reputable works.

              

To a residence, a group of aristocrats arrive, Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), François (Paul Frankeur) and Simone Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig), and Florence (Bulle Ogier), the host is Alice Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran), go to dine, but because of a misunderstanding, they must leave. Trying to dine in a restaurant, they run into a wake, leave. Don Rafael, ambassador of Miranda, receives Henri Sénéchal (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the other host, and Thévenot, they negotiate cocaine. The Monsignor Dufour (Julien Bertheau) arrives at the Sénéchal residence, asking to be a gardener of the house, being accepted. The three women go to another restaurant, where all the drinks are over, and where a soldier refers them to a memory. Simone and Rafael maintain adultery. A dinner of distinguished people is made, also interrupted, now by a military regiment, one of which tells them of another dream, there are shootings, the dinner never materializes. Another attempt at a snack ends in a play, they do not achieve anything; in an elegant meeting, Don Rafael kills a man who insults him, it is another dream. The Monsignor continues to work in the Sénéchal garden, and one day, being an orphan as a child, he has to confess to the murderer of his parents on his deathbed, he kills him. After all are arrested, military intervention again, the dinner never takes place, they walk on a road.

The film is an authentic Buñuelian reference, probably his work better known internationally, that for sure in large measure due to his success at the Academy Awards, a film totally surreal, but with a surrealism no longer delirious in the way of his beginnings, but in the manner of the director's maturity. Thus, the surreal, the implausible, is reflected from the initial sequence, the bourgeois approach the house of one of their comrades, only to find that the host is not there, only find his wife, she not knowing that dinner was that night, she thought it was still the next night. The delirious parade of dementia will not stop then, then they go to a restaurant, they find it empty, and what is more, they find in full development a wake, the corpse combined with dinner; although the rupture of the limit between reality and dream or fantasy has not yet manifested, situations are already denoting delirium. Among the unprecedented situations, in an elegant restaurant there is nothing to drink, no coffee, no tea, no water, no infusions, then a lieutenant tells the sordid story of seeing his dead mother, who speaks to him and gives some guidelines to eliminate who he mistakenly believes his father. In another moment of the most delirious and best achieved, we have another attempt at dinner, again frustrated, this time appearing all in the middle of a play, which in turn will end up being a dream of Thévenot; a total delirium. We see the extraordinary sequence of the militia's incursion, in one of the umpteenth attempts of dinner, after which, surreally, Fernando Rey is hidden under the table, and when faced by the military, with singular indifference he eats a bread with ham, always under the table, in a figure that seems to have been insinuated in Belle de jour (1967). A representatively surreal image of the film is the recidivist figure of the six protagonists walking, elegantly dressed and walking on an open road, with no near destination or apparent destination, without meaning, like the very meaning of the film, which does not seek logic, but show us a compilation of dream situations, with the nuances of the filmmaker. Buñuel even inserts events or sequences that have no direct connection with other events, such as the lieutenant and his story of his dead mother. In that sense, death was always one of the recurring themes in the cinema of Spanish, but in this opportunity takes other forms, the dead mother of the lieutenant appears with dead lividity, the father also appears with the flagrant wound of the duel that ended with his life. The sergeant will again relapse on the subject of the dead who contact directly with living beings, the military officer who daily griefs, another unusual approach to the dead returning, dead among the living, supernatural subject that will certainly be a striking and paranormal novelty in the work of the filmmaker, surprising both well-known and strangers, is the final style of the spanish that finishes polishing all his edges.

Now, another one of the figures of all the life in Buñuel, the aristocrats, returns to be center of the film, but with new and particular nuances of his, final worries or topics arise in the film director, now there are also politicians, politicians who traffic cocaine. On this occasion, the police returns to be embodied in Buñuel's film, no longer with the loathing of Don Lope in Tristana (1970), but it is not safe from being ridiculed by his office with the implausible arrest of all the aristocrats; similarly, there are other issues, there is terrorism, in the form of the girl, growth and demographic explosion, chimeric freedoms that reach their peak in the next film, The Phantom of Liberty (1974), are diversified in the end the usual topics of the director. But returning to the bourgeois, these are shown, in their actions, ruinous, despicable, of dubious morals, strutting their artificial sophistication, their discreet charm, as when Thévenot presumed his knowledge in the consumption and preparation of beverages. Traffickers, beings who practice adultery among themselves, reaches the climax of the topic of the bourgeoisie, already outlined in The Golden Age (1930), in The Exterminating Angel (1962), mixed with the surreal delirium of the final stage, of the final maturity of the Iberian. We will see funny moments of the experiences of these bourgeois, we have Florence, always hungry for vices, alcohol, marijuana, denying her addiction, but always with her drunkenness, is at times a vaudeville parade of the miseries and absurdities, delirium of these aristocrats; but beware, that entertainment is not the crux of the film. In the same way, the very particular religious vision of Buñuel will again be reflected in the figure of the Monseñor, a prominent religious who works as a gardener, forgetting even his patron at a certain moment his status as a cleric. To continue enriching his always particular view of the Christian religion, we have the powerful figure of the Monsignor, meeting in an unthinkable way the very murderer of his parents, when he was a child, now being a gardener -like the one who ended the life of his parents-, and the priest, in a sign that his humanity surpasses his figure as a man of God, shoots who made him an orphan. And of course, we have the very brief but present sequence of Muni -the actress of whom Buñuel said that in France became something like his pet, an assiduous in his final films- asserting that he hates Christ, an assertion that does not get answered, the priest pushes it away, leaving that door open. Buñuel was a filmmaker who in his cinema, almost above all things, always expressed frustrations, he was always interested in frustrations, he had no problem affirming it in one of his many interviews, and in that sense is exemplary and referential the amour fou never consummated in The Golden Age, now we have the frustration of the sexual act that is not consumed twice, the Thévenot, and the adulterers Simone and Rafael. In addition to of course, dinner, dinner that never happens.

It is probably Buñuel's film in which the narrative structure is more fractured, a constant dislocation of the perspective entangles the narrative articulation, through insertions, insertions of dreams, dreams that are presented as such, or memories, or games with visions of the dead, everything is woven and fused with reality; neither police nor militia are safe from the corrosive Buñuelian surrealism, the military interrupts another dinner, smoke marijuana, and then everything is interrupted again, everything is apparently part of another dream. The commissar, Thévenot, the sergeant, the lieutenant, Don Rafael, another soldier, all of them, thanks to the freedom to refer dreams, become escape routes from the linearity of the story, a universe where the imaginary and South American Miranda exists, where ignorances sometimes, vilifications as well, are pointed by the aristocrats. Buñuel was already experienced, experienced in breaking that fine dividing line of reality and onirism, in mixing both worlds, being a pioneer in his filmography in this aspect, Belle de jour, but never showed the mastery that now exhibits in that particular section of his narrative style. Dreams, fantasies, sordid memories, and all convoluted, dreams inside dreams, is undoubtedly one of the most courageous and challenging stagings of the director, which tests the viewer himself, he definitely could no longer detach himself from that kind of narration, and the almost total freedom granted to structure his audiovisual story in this way. Thus, everything happens without explaining anything, because it is certainly not necessary, we do not delve into the psychologies of the characters, because Buñuel was never characterized by delving into the psyches of his protagonists; the circumstances, the context, often acquire preponderance over humans in Buñuel's cinema. Technically, there were certain amenities that technology allowed for the first time, it was a more placid shooting for Buñuel and that by then, with 72 years on his back, did not hurt, he could have more control of the camera thanks to new video controls, he was able to control the audio through headphones, he could shoot seated. He also uses a resource, different sounds in different situations will interrupt the viewing, they will not allow us to fully listen to character dialogues, dialogues that could help us understand their humanities, especially in the final section, with the politicians involved, a resource that increases the interest of the spectator, and that is certainly novel to appreciate in the filmmaker. We also appreciate a camera that behaves with great sobriety, serenely wanders with travellings some rooms but has no abrupt movements or camera follow-ups in hand, as in previous years; it develops now with parsimonious sobriety. He finally settled down with his acting company, the formidable Fernando Rey at the head, the beautiful muse of Chabrol, Stéphane Audran, also briefly again appears his loyal friend Michel Piccoli as Prime Minister, the acting elegance that missed the director in The Exterminating Angel, has it finally and fully. In the end, they all return to walk, that's how the film gets closed, walking aimlessly, without destiny or more explanation, everything could have been quietly the dream of some protagonist. Some will say that it is the director's major film, whose oeuvre is so gigantic, in quantitative as well as qualitative abundance, that this assertion is a bit haphazard, but there is no doubt that it is a major sample of the cinema that this extraordinary artist knew to produce. Simply unmissable filmic exercise.