One of Luis Bunuel's most popular films, due in part to it's star - Catherine Deneuve, one of the most beautiful movie stars of all time - and kinky subject matter - bored rich housewife goes to work in a high class brothel. Denueve gets to wear some sexy outfits, is frequently in her underwear and taking off her bra, showing her bare back, having lots of kinky sex. There are also some other prostitutes wearing exotic underwear and a lesbian kiss with the madam (Genevieve Page).
To explain her mind set we get lots of flashbacks - including Deneuve molested (well, kissed) by a dirty old man when she was a child, which is a jolt - as well as fantasy sequences, often involving sado masochism. Sometimes the line between the two is blurred, especially as the film goes on, and we are not sure what is real and what is reality.
This sort of material and approach has been much copied since then so this piece doesn't have the impact it must have had at the time. I always hate criticising films that are acclaimed as materipieces because I don't want to look dim but I didn't think this was amazing. Deneuve, for all her stunning beauty, is a bit bland at times - I get what the character was going through, the fact she can't do it for her husband but can for clients, that she's dangerously attracted to the gangster... but I can't help feeling a better actor would have been able to convey more emotion and complexity.
I also felt the second half was overly familiar of Breatheless - a newspaper seller yelling out in English about the Tribune, a cocky gangster who commits random crimes, the gangster being shot down in the street.
Jean Sorel was effective as the husband; ditto madam Page, sleazy Michel Piccoli and the gangster kid Pierre Clementi (memorable teeth).
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