But not succeeding anyway. Buñuel was a genius and de Oliveira only a very talented movie director. A parenthesis to say that for you to understand fully this movie you must have seen Buñuel's movie "Belle de Jour" which dates from the sixties of last century. This movie now aspires (as some kind of homage to Buñuel's work) to be some kind of continuation of the latter but a feeble one indeed. Those who have seen Buñuel's movie probably will remember the story: a beautiful woman (Catherine Deneuve then) who loves her husband has however some masochist tendency which pulls her to prostitute herself in a luxury brothel. Buñuel tells this story brilliantly in images and dialogues diving deeply in the arcana of the human soul. De Oliveira's movie profits (or tries to profit) from that story by concocting a supposed not very meaningful end to it (which becomes a poor open end after all). The story of the movie we are reviewing now is based in the encounter many years later of the woman of the first movie (Bulle Ogier now who resembles Catherine Deneuve as much as a screech-owl resembles a dove)and a close friend (Michel Piccoli) of her and her (now already deceased) husband, who tries to convince her to have dinner with him in a private room in a posh restaurant by promising to tell her if he had or not told her husband at the time of the events above mentioned, about her behaviour also above described. This has not much interest in itself as the continuation of Buñuel's story to be given as the climax in de Oliveira's movie. To the movie's credit however we may refer the excellent performance of Michel Piccoli, a few nice images of Paris and some beautiful interiors and visual details and the smooth visual development of the story showing the de Oliveira's real talent in what regards movie's and actor's direction. And that's all.
Review of Belle toujours
