Product Details

• Actors: Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier, Julia Buisel, Leonor Baldaque, Ricardo Trepa
• Directors: Manoel de Oliveira
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Language: French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: New Yorker Video
• DVD Release Date: June 24, 2008
• Run Time: 70 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0015TJGH8
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #56,616 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Belle Toujours" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A winking homage to Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière's signature collaboration, Belle de Jour. --Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY

Product Description

In this homage to Luís Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, Manoel de Oliveira reunites the leading characters from the 1967 classic Belle de jour. Picking up from where Buñuel s erotic masterpiece left off, Michel Piccoli returns in Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours as Henri Husson older and wiser, but still every bit the sadist libertine who in the original both lusted after and callously taunted Catherine Deneuve's Séverine to the very end. What exactly did Husson whisper into the ear of her paraplegic husband?

In Belle Toujours, Oliveira s Séverine is played by Bulle Ogier, whom Piccoli's Husson first spots sitting a few rows away from him at a concert in Paris. A cat-and-mouse game ensues until Husson manages to gain her attention with the intention of revealing the secret that he alone can unfold. After years of lingering torment, Séverine is finally offered an opportunity to uncover the truth about what her husband learned or didn't learn about her during that fateful visit with Husson so many years earlier.

Special Features:
- Interviews with: Manoel de Oliveira, Michael Piccoli, Bulle Ogier and Ricardo Trêpa
- Theatrical Trailer
- Photo Gallery
- Press Kit (Download the 39-page press kit, including the director's bio, cast & crew filmographies, production notes, an essay by Randal Johnson (author of Contemporary Film Directors: Manoel de Oliveira) and more via your computer s DVD-ROM drive.)
- Enhanced for 16x9 Tvs
- Scene Selections
- Optional English Subtitles

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I have yet to see a bad Manoel de Oliveira film...., July 7, 2008

By	Grigory's Girl "Grigory's Girl" (NYC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This is yet one more excellent film in the oeuvre of Manoel de Oliveira. It's another endlessly fascinating, intellectual, thoughtful, and dark film. It's not technically a sequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour, more like a tribute and a coda to the original story. You don't have to see Belle de Jour to understand this film, but it helps. De Oliveira doesn't try to outdo Bunuel here (except when a chicken makes a cameo), but instead has his own unique, fascinating take of the main characters from Belle de Jour (if you want to see a Manoel de Oliveira film where he gives Bunuel a run for his money, check out Magic Mirror, the film he made before this one). Michel Piccoli once again meets Bulle Ogier (she replaced Catherine Deneuve here), and asks her to dinner. He expects to "rekindle" their relationship, but he's in for quite a surprise.

This is a deceptively simple film. It's beautifully shot, acted, written, and directed. Piccoli is wonderful and charming, and Ogier gives her character an edge here that, dare I say, Deneuve might have missed. Richardo Trepa, a De Oliveira regular, plays a bartender here and he is wonderful, turning in one of his best performances in Manoel's work. The script is quite literate, and the first part of the concluding dinner scene is fascinating, as it is done without any dialogue. All you hear is Ogier and Piccoli eating. When their conversation starts, it's intense, real, sad, bitter, and very poetic. The whole film works wonderfully.

The only complaint I have is that the film is too short. It runs just over an hour (70 minutes), and I wished it was longer. New Yorker Video gave this film a fine transfer, and has some great interviews with de Oliveira, Piccoli, Ogier, and Trepa. The de Oliveira interview was recorded two days after the opening of his retrospective at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. I met Manoel on the opening day of the retrospective(they were screening his latest film, Christopher Columbus, The Enigma, a good film, but like Belle Toujours, too short), and it is one of the greatest experiences of my life meeting him. This is one of his best films.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Drawn Sequel to Buñuel's Belle de Jour., August 2, 2008

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Paying homage to Luís Buñuel's 1967 classic Belle de Jour, Belle Toujours is a 2006 Portuguese film directed by prolific filmmaker, Manoel de Oliveira, who was in his 90s when he made this sequel. The poignant, slow-paced film picks up thirty-eight years after where Buñuel's psychosexual masterpiece left off, with Michel Piccoli reprising his unforgettable role as an older Henri Husson, who remains the equally sadistic and manipulative libertine who lusted after and tormented Catherine Deneuve's Séverine in the original film. Bulle Ogier plays Séverine in Belle Toujours. She attempts to avoid Henri throughout much of the film, as he relentlessly stalks her with the intention of revealing a secret from their past, a secret involving what he told her mute and paralized husband. Belle Toujours will appeal to fans of both Luís Buñuel and Manoel de Oliveira. This special-edition DVD includes interviews with Manoel de Oliveira, Michael Piccoli, Bulle Ogier, and Ricardo Trêpa; the theatrical trailer; and a photo gallery.

G. Merritt

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Boring, October 24, 2008

By	Chauncey (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

It seemed that this movie was made to answer a lingering question from a previous movie but, it did not answer the question. I will avoid this director in the future, he has stung me once. However, if you are learning French it is not too difficult to understand. The characters speak clearly and they do not use a lot of much slang so it is good for practicing your French.