Belle de Jour (Criterion Collection)

Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Genevieve Page. Deneuve plays Séverine, a chilly Paris housewife by night, a bordello prostitute by day. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits. In French with English subtitles. Directed by Luis Buñuel. 1967/color/100 min/R/widescreen.