rdoyle29 If I was forced to pick a favourite filmmaker, I would have to pick Luis Buñuel. He saw people for the deeply flawed things we are, yet really kind of loved us for our absurd refusal to accept our weaknesses. His last film stars Fernando Rey as an urbane, dignified gentleman who falls hopelessly in love with Conchita, a young woman he meets working as his maid and who he actively pursues and couples with on and off throughout the film. She returns his affection, but refuses to let him conjugate their relationship. She alternates between hot and cold, promising to sleep with him and then withdrawing at the last moment, viciously rebuking him and then begging him to come back. This sounds like she is the villain of the piece, but it's never that simple with Buñuel. Her repeated statement that she loves him wholeheartedly, but is refusing him only this one small part of her has a certain absurd plausibility to it. When Maria Schneider walked off the film, Buñuel replaced her with two actresses. Conchita is alternately played by Carole Bouquet ("For Your Eyes Only") and Ángela Molina ("Live Flesh"). It's tempting to seek a pattern in this bold bit of weirdness, but really there's no deeper meaning to this move. It's a last bit of absurdist genius from a true master.

bobsgrock The great surrealist director Luis Bunuel's final foray into the exploration of the darkest sides of human desire and will is more straightforward than some of his previous surreal works, especially The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty. The other Bunuel film this may most closely resemble is Belle de Jour, which focused on the inner thoughts and obsessions of a bored, frigid Parisian housewife who dabbles in sexual promiscuity. Here, Bunuel dips into literature once again for a tale of obsession told from two, or perhaps three perspectives. The story is fairly simple and straightforward: a wealthy, middle-aged man becomes infatuated with one of his servants, thus beginning a long, torrid relationship between them involving numerous battles of will and determination. The twist Bunuel adds here is the technique of using two actresses to play the same character, the tempestuous Conchita, with each symbolizing her two sides of expression. Angela Molina plays the seductress while Carole Bouquet plays the cold, distant lover. The most interesting aspect of the film from this point is the tug of war these three play. The man wants to fulfill his lust for Conchita in every way, including physical. However, she remains distant, using every opportunity to tease him into submission before harshly rejecting his advances. Her excuse is that she feels going to the next step would lead to him disowning her as he would have done all he could with her. In this way, Bunuel sets up a deliciously comical paradox: both sides have legitimate points to their statements but neither can completely win over the other party.What remains with the audience long after the film is Bunuel's effortless ability to draw in the viewer with tantalizing imagery and ideas. His direction is so subtle, so smooth in its piecing together the story that at times it is hardly noticeable. This was a hallmark of his career, with less emphasis on flashy techniques and more focus on character, story, and thematic development. This final film is no exception and is a wonderful capstone to a memorable career. Bunuel's legacy may be his iconoclastic style, but his insight into humanity's frail holdings on its emotional designs should not, and will not, be overlooked.

Stanley-Becker Another Surrealist satire from the comic eye of the Surrealist master. This one a work of a 76 year old. However, its fresh and alive, with a teasing, warm attitude that will give it, {I predict}, an eternal duration.What are the bourgeois up to this time? Well, the lead male Don Mateo, is having dinner at a friends {as the bourgeois often do} when, lo and behold, a perfectly charming and quite delectable young chambermaid fills his glass with wine {"the wrong glass, silly girl"}. Don Mateo takes one look at this fetching young wench and the most basic instincts instantly take hold of him. He decides at that moment he must have sexual intercourse with this member of the opposite sex. As the old adage goes "it takes two to tango" she, {she answers to Conchita}, is not ready to dance. "Whoa", she says and pushes him away. As with many men who understand their class advantages as a given, Don Mateo knows that he has something that adorable, sweet, sexy, Conchita badly needs - MONEY!! Conchita is no fool and her mother and the nuns who educated her have warned her, about being on her guard with men, who have their dastardly way, use her as a sexual convenience, and then go on to the next young sex conquest, She plays her cards close to her chest, and while keeping Don Mateo's libido flirtatiously in a state of excited anticipation, she leads him on a merry dance. The name of this dance is "That Obscure Object of Desire", its 103 minutes long and its delightful to watch.The scene where she goes with him to his country house promising to deliver the goods, and then climbs into bed wearing a chastity belt, had me in hysterics {and that's rare for me}. The movie is full of teasing, surreal jokes, and the absurd conventions of the bourgeois conformist life-style, are magically presented.Bunuel beautifully illustrates the "dance" metaphor by making Conchita a Flamenco dancer { a dance of passion and love} and then surrealistically turns the convention on its head, by showing her moonlighting as a nude flamenco dancer to earn some extra cash. {"Luis, Breton would have been proud of you if he had lived to see that scene"}. Anyway, this delightful entertainment goes through umpteen twists and shifts, all maniacally clever, until the curtain comes down Unlike Hollywood endings both characters retain their integrity {no depressing capitulation of will here}.What an "up" this movie is, and so intelligent. Don't waste your time watching the same old false story that Hollywood dishes out over and over again - watch this instead, you'll love it!

Ilpo Hirvonen Cet obscur objet du désir or That Obscure Object of Desire marked the final film by Luis Bunuel. It is his cinematographic legacy and can be seen as a reflection of his production. It was totally an unexpected film by Bunuel. He had just made, according to himself, a trilogy (The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty) of films episodic in structure and with no direct plot. That Obscure Object of Desire was much more linear in structure but just as ambiguous and challenging.That Obscure Object of Desire is an astonishing piece of work and could easily be seen as Bunuel's finest film. Like most films by Bunuel, this film has a lot to offer and is open for several different interpretations. The film is multidimensional and has got many layers; social, political and erotic levels. This idea is reinforced by the parallel worlds Bunuel had placed in the film. The new world is the world of Conchita - the world of terrorism; Luis Bunuel saw terrorism as the biggest issue of our time, and was contemplating questions whether it was justified to kill innocent people to achieve justice. He was thinking about these issues seriously, and this contemplating has clearly reflected on That Obscure Object of Desire.Then there's the old world which Don Mathieu represents - the world which is disappearing. Don Mathieu tries to get in touch with the new world but can't and finds himself taking more and more distance to it. I shall depict this a little through an example. The scene where Conchita is having sex (actually faking) with his 'lover' and, let's Don Mathieu watch through the gate. First he stays there, then he leaves, but after a while comes back. He takes distance to the new world but can't let go of the object of his desire. This idea of two parallel worlds and Mathieu in between of the transition is reinforced by the fact that this film takes place in two different countries - worlds; Spain and France. This separation to two worlds is shown to the viewer in multiple images but one quite illustrating one is the picture where first, the camera films high skyscrapers - close to heaven, but then slowly lands down and reveals cranky shacks on the ground. This theme of dichotomy repeats in the character of Conchita who is played by two actresses. The two different actresses reinforce the emotional charge and elusiveness of Conchita. Carole Bouquet represents the cold, frigid side of Conchita and Ángela Molina the warm, sympathetic side. They represent two contrasts of the character and this highlights the theme of dichotomy. It was common to use one actor to play multiple roles, for instance Jean Marais is Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, but to use two actors to play one role was groundbreaking in the history of cinema and it worked, incredibly well. This elusive character also represents a very masculine perspective of women; volatile and treacherous. But to my mind it has nothing to do with Bunuel's own attitude, it just builds up the character, and Don Mathieu's Obscure Desire for Conchita; obscure because of the elusiveness of the character.The film portrays an artificial world, which Bunuel loved to portray as the world of the bourgeoisie. This theme was culminated in one of the most famous scenes in The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie; where the characters realize that their life is just an act, performed at a stage - their life's fake, show, only display. That Obscure Object of Desire is told through Mathieu's, at times interrupted, monologue; and at one point one of the fellow passengers takes a clear contact to the camera as he takes a look at us. This contact proves that there is a camera - fiction knows that it is fiction, film admits only being a film. The life of the characters is just a movie - just an act.The ending of That Obscure Object of Desire is quite fascinating and left open for interpretation. The film is Bunuel's cinematographic legacy where the circle of his production comes to an end - the music by Wagner in the ending is a reference to Bunuel's first film, An Andalusian Dog. There is certain realism in the aesthetics of Bunuel, not in the perversions, bruises or honest portrayal of violence but in the behavior of the characters, and the wounds done by the actions of them. In the films by Bunuel, there are many wounds torn but the characters always try to heal them by sewing (Belle de Jour, Diary of a Chambermaid). In the final scene of That Obscure Object of Desire Don Mathieu and Conchita see a woman sewing a bloody sheet. The woman is sewing the wound of the society, healing the wounds done by the characters, but also the wound of cinema - torn by Bunuel.After this, Don Mathieu and Conchita walk away from the woman and, suddenly the entire place explodes. Luis Bunuel adored Fritz Lang's Destiny (1921) and it was one of his very favorite films. It's a film about Death who is tired of misery and agony - Bunuel was incredibly fascinated by this presence of Death and the communication with him. For Bunuel man could only live freely if he let's his life in the hands of coincidence, blind chance. But there is one inevitable destiny that awaits us all - death, in our bedroom or in the streets dominated by terrorism. The title of the film is obscure, elusive and indefinite itself and fits perfectly for this story with no end.