Belle De Jour

In Belle Toujours, his homage to Luis Bunuel and Jean-Claude Carriere, Manoel De Oliveira reunites the leading characters from Bunuel's erotic masterpiece, the 1967 classic Belle De Jour. French cinema icon Michel Piccoli returns 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 Severine to the very end. What exactly did Husson whisper into the ear of her paraplegic husband? Did he reveal Severine's double life as a high class prostitute?

In Belle Toujours, Severine 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 ensures until Husson manages to gain her attention with the intention of revealing the secret that he alone can unfold. After years of lingering torment, Severine is finally offered a chance to uncover the truth.

As elegant as Severine, as playful as Husson, Belle Toujours is a lovely meditation about memory, the persistence of desire, lost opportunities, and the power of stories.