Belle de Jour

[poliphilo]

Belle de Jour is a cool film. Cool in both senses. Very smart, very detached.

I saw it when it first came out. I was in my late teens and it was way too adult for me. I had romantic notions about love and just didn't get the complexity and perversity of the heroine's sexuality.

I have grown into Bunuel's vision of the world. Civilisation is so much frosting.

Catherine Deneuve is the ultimate Hitchcock blonde. Unfortunately she came on the scene too late for Hitch to employ her. I love her stillness.

I wrote a sequence of poems on Spanish subjects a few years back. Here's the one about Bunuel.



BUNUEL

Hypocrisy is sometimes merely
Good manners,

Or should we turn that round
And call good manners hypocrisy?

He was, I’ve read, urbane himself,
A typical bourgeois- Drinky-drinks
And a dog at his feet.

My favourite picture
Shows him sighting a hunting rifle
Straight at the camera.

Who do you think
We’re going to meet when we round this corner?
Could it be Fernando Rey
In a nice white suit? “Hola, Fernando.”
Could it be the parish priest
In his broad-brimmed hat? “Good evening, father”
Could it be a yellow dog
With its tongue wag-wagging, dispensing drool?
Pad, pad, pad, not quite a wolf,
But not exactly man’s best friend either.