Belle toujours

The latest fi lm by soon-to-be centenarian Oliveira could be described as a post-modernist intellectual little piece about the unswerving logic of human life, fi nding its roots in Buñuelesque poetics. In this Oliveira’s fantasque vision, the aged heroine from Buñuel’s fi lm „Belle de jour“ runs across her husband’s old friend. At one point he had yearned terribly for her, but she rejected him. After a number of attempts to avoid an encounter, she fi nally gives in and has dinner with him. Both hope they may yet uncover the other’s mysteries. Michel Piccoli and Bulle Ogier bring into the fi lm an inner strength and the nostalgia of old age; the enclosed elegant interiors are reminiscent of the bizarrely claustrophobic worlds depicted in numerous Buñuel fi lms.