Post by Capo on Jul 22, 2007 22:17:14 GMT
Cet obscur objet du désir
That Obscure Object of Desire
Luis Buñuel 1977 France / Spain
A well-to-do Frenchman falls for his Spanish maid, but she resists his sexual advances in order to test his love.
His last film, possibly his best too, a culmination of sexual desire, frothing violence and narrative complexity: it unfolds not only in flashback, but entirely through the eyes of Fernando Rey, so that - even if this narrator is heavily subjective in his telling of events - we go along with him in falling in love with the charms of his muse, and by the end of it, feel his devastation at the hands of her meandering deceits. It's like Fowles's The Magus in that respect, in how it secures a truth for long enough to seem credible before wrongfooting its audience and going back on itself, before again assuming our trust (this whole notion helped by the casting of two different actresses to play the same woman - it's two twins in The Magus). Terrorism is ever present: the Revolution Army of the Infant Jesus explodes bombs in shopping malls and rail stations, and in the more personal sense, our hero seems to confuse money with love in paying increasingly exuberant amounts of wealth in order to woo his would-be lover. And the final explosion is a coming together of the two: a bomb which unites our couple whilst window shopping.
That Obscure Object of Desire
Luis Buñuel 1977 France / Spain
A well-to-do Frenchman falls for his Spanish maid, but she resists his sexual advances in order to test his love.
His last film, possibly his best too, a culmination of sexual desire, frothing violence and narrative complexity: it unfolds not only in flashback, but entirely through the eyes of Fernando Rey, so that - even if this narrator is heavily subjective in his telling of events - we go along with him in falling in love with the charms of his muse, and by the end of it, feel his devastation at the hands of her meandering deceits. It's like Fowles's The Magus in that respect, in how it secures a truth for long enough to seem credible before wrongfooting its audience and going back on itself, before again assuming our trust (this whole notion helped by the casting of two different actresses to play the same woman - it's two twins in The Magus). Terrorism is ever present: the Revolution Army of the Infant Jesus explodes bombs in shopping malls and rail stations, and in the more personal sense, our hero seems to confuse money with love in paying increasingly exuberant amounts of wealth in order to woo his would-be lover. And the final explosion is a coming together of the two: a bomb which unites our couple whilst window shopping.