Originally published 7th April 2015 on my Tumblr. I'm moving some old writing from there over here because it's nice to have it all in one place. It's also nice to look back once in a while.
A rousing performance of Antonin Dvorak's dramatic 8th Symphony is an apt setting for the tense reunion of high-class prostitute Severine and blackmailer Henri from Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour. After seeing her across the theatre, a visibly excited Henri tries to catch up with Severine after the performance, but she sees him and, visibly uncomfortable, leaves before he can find her. Dejected, he wanders wordlessly through Paris, lost in thought, before he sees her again outside a bar. The lack of dialogue in these opening scenes is striking, if only because there's so much for these people to say to each other; or rather one vital piece of information that has haunted Severine for decades.
This silence eventually gives way to long, probing conversations between Henri and a barman, both recapping the narrative and exploring the meanings of Buñuel's film, which only serves to increase the tension, before he finally meets Severine face to face. They sit down to a long, awkward dinner, and she finally asks the questions she's been dying know the answer to for 40 years: did you tell my husband? Oliveira knows how important this is to Severine, but also how important it is to the ambiguity of Buñuel's film, so instead of inventing an answer he slowly builds up to a reveal that may or may not arrive, and Severine, sick of Henri's game-playing, which he evidently enjoys, storms out before he can tell her. Belle Toujours is less a sequel than a necessarily frustrating b-side to Buñuel's film, that shares only its characters and the crucial idea that what matters isn't what's said, but what's left to hang in the air.