Belle de jour
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). When her lovestruck friend Henri (Michel Piccoli) mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais (Genevieve Page), Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients (Pierre Clémenti) grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
Peter William Evans is Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. His research and publications are mainly on Spanish cinema and classical Hollywood cinema. He is the author of The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire (Oxford University Press, 1995), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (BFI, 1996) and the editor of Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1999).
