That Obscure Object of Desire Blu-ray Review

12th Sep 2012

At the age of 77 this was Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s last film. Although the shock value of some of his other films may have waned a little, he never the less deals with many of those Surrealist subjects which he pursued with vigor – namely sexuality and desire. This film, being his last effort naturally falls under the category of films known as Late Buñuel – the films which cover the period between the mid-1960s from his last great masterpiece Belle de Jour starring Catherine Deneuve until his death not long after making this film. Bunuel was an agitator and remained one even in later life. He began his career in France and ended it there. Born a Catalan he grew up at college with another young agitator, the painter Salvador Dali whom he collaborated with on their first two film projects – the very Surreal and still shocking today Un Chien Andalou (1928) and L’Age d’Or (1930) before falling out with Dali, going on to become a left wing documentary maker and went into self exile and imposed exile following the defeat of the left by the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War to Mexico where he remained for several years making films there right up until the early 1960s. Many of these films also became minor classics although they are less seen today than the early or late films. In the early 1960s Buñuel made a couple of films in Spain, but naturally the way they attack the bourgeoisie led to fears of arrest and he made his way once again to France where he began his career.

In France he collaborated with producer Serge Silberman and six of his last seven films were made with Silberman and he co-wrote them with Jean-Claude Carrière. And in a way his career was perfectly bookended. Un Chien Andalou, his first film, begins with Buñuel himself severing an eye under moonlight with a razor and it ends with a seamstress sewing a slit back together – a strange detail that is so typical of the director. Like Belle de Jour before it, That Obscure Object of Desire begins with a bourgeois man (played by Buñuel regular Fernando Rey) booking a one way train journey from his home of Seville in Spain to Paris. While the train is waiting at the station to depart a beautiful young woman runs up to board it (the role of Conchita is bizarrely played by two actresses – Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina). The man, called Mathieu throws a bucket of water on her as the train pulls out. His fellow passengers are shocked by this when he proceeds to tell them about his relationship with this woman; that for years they had been carrying on a relationship, he as an older sugar daddy always buying her gifts including a villa and she always rejecting him at the moment they are about to make love. As the film develops we, like his fellow passengers grow to understand the reasoning behind him giving her a drenching. He says himself, “if you knew the story you’d know she deserves much more”.

In old age this is Buñuel giving his ageing view on sex and the pursuit of sex from a younger muse. By contrast, the earlier and more accomplished Belle de Jour also explores sex as commodity, as an escape from bourgeois trappings and as liberator from the perspective of a woman. We as the viewer react in the same way as the assorted train passengers and grow intolerant of this woman ourselves. Really though, Buñuel’s farewell film lacks much of the power of some of his other films yet he never the less still impresses us and allows us to raise an eyebrow. Ultimately the film lacks much of the shock value of many of his films prior to this one and includes a rather misread tacked on subplot with terrorists which doesn’t really work too well especially in the films final shot. Also included on the DVD are some French documentaries (as with many of the recent Studiocanal releases) about working with Buñuel and how those around him grew to tolerate and understand his way and style of filmmaking from affectionate to less affectionate recollections.