Belle de Jour (1967)

*I wrote this paper for another film class on the French film Belle de Jour, hence the more formal writing style.

Belle de Jour (1967), wrought with issues of sexual perversion, unconscious desire, memory and subjectivity, can be read almost as a sexual bildungsroman for the leading lady Severine Serizy. Severine’s sexual coming of age serves as a way of mediating her unconscious desires, manifested in her explicitly perverse sexual dreams and fantasies, with her conscious desires and the reality of her married life. Though the film’s treatment of Severine’s sexuality would seem to promote a progressive approach towards feminine sexuality that encourages women to embrace their need for pleasure, the last few minutes of the film appear to negate this progressive take on feminine sexuality through the moral and ethical punishment Severine undergoes at the close of the film.

Masochistic fantasy at the film’s opening

Belle de Jour points to Freudian theories of sexuality in its approach to Severine’s ‘aberrant’ sexual desires. Severine, from the very first scene, demonstrates her repressed masochistic desires through her fantasy in which she is beaten and degraded by several men, including her husband; they whip her as they scream, “Tramp” and “Slut” at her. This fantasy version of Severine is immediately juxtaposed with the actual Severine, who is demure and innocent and turns down her husband’s sexual advances despite his obvious love and respect for her.

Two worlds..

Two men.

Severine longs to be used as a passive sexual object, but she does not want to be disrespected as a person, just in the bedroom. This is evidenced by her reaction to Husson; her secret desire to be degraded, used, and humiliated would seem to welcome behavior like that of Henri Husson, who is a blatant misogynist and does not attempt to hide his objectification of the women around him. Severine wants to be degraded, but in a very specific way, and on her own terms. Indeed, the two main men of the film serve to elucidate the different aspects of what Severine both desires and needs. Pierre is the vision of comfort, respect, and stability that Severine consciously desires, but he carries over his loving, respectful attitude into the sexual aspects of their marriage, which leaves Severine with zero sexual desire for him. She wants to be hurt in the bedroom, both physically and emotionally, and her relationship with Marcel blossoms because he can fulfill this need. However, Marcel does not fit into her world. He is morally corrupt criminal who is too possessive and controlling; he does not respect the boundaries she sets forth for their relationship.

Severine begins working at the brothel because her repressed, unconscious desires—stemming from an incident of sexual abuse as a child, which we see in a flashback—have become so pronounced that they demand attention in her conscious reality. She takes charge of her sexuality and actively seeks the fulfillment of her own pleasure. Unlike the other women, she chooses to be a prostitute not out of fiscal necessity but out of desire for sexual exploration. Though she is hesitant at first, she quickly takes a liking to her job as a prostitute; she even seems to derive much pleasure from it, particularly from the clients with extremely pronounced sexual fetishes and perversions. In these clients, we see more echoes of Freudian sexual theory.

Severine participating in voyeurism

As Severine looks voyeuristically through the peephole as Charlotte role plays as “The Duchess” and steps on the Professor’s face, she is appalled as to how any man could stoop so low as to ask to be humiliated like that. Ironically, the Professor’s fantasy seems to be the flip side of Severine’s fetish in which she is the masochist and the man is the aggressive sadist.

Although she does not take well to the Professor (perhaps because their tastes have a little too much in common), she is more than welcoming of the other clients with specific sexual desires, like the Japanese client with the buzzing box. In her fantasies as well, she encourages these sexual perversions; for example, in her fantasy of “The Duke” who brings her to his house and forces her to role-play as a corpse in a coffin.

Sexual abnormality is also hinted at in the relationship between Madame Anais and Severine, which features distinct homoerotic undertones (and indeed, overtones). Madame Anais is a masculine figure, with her manly haircut and role of power in running the brothel. She learns the Severine likes to be ruled with a firm hand, and as the film progresses, the sexual undercurrent between them mounts, culminating in Severine kissing Madam Anais. This could be an episode of Freduian “contingent inversion”, in which the inaccessibility of a normal sexual object requires the individual to turn to someone within their own sex (Gay 241).

Stylistically, the film even seems to suggest moments of sexual perversion by fetishizing the feet in several scenes; one such scene occurs when Severine first arrives at the brothel and the camera focuses on her hesitant feet as she ascends the stairs. Another moment occurs when Marcel and Severine are in bed together and the camera pans down to focus on their shoe-clad feet, as Marcel slowly slips one of his boots off.

The more Severine welcomes the sexual perversions and fetishes of others, the more she is able to come to terms with her own. She has almost mediated her own masochistic tendencies with her reality. Towards the end of the film, it seems as if her relationship with Pierre is improving, and after quitting her job at the whorehouse, it seems as if she might be able to channel her sexual abnormalities into a more healthy sexual relationship with her husband.

With Marcel’s attack on Pierre, however, all hopes of this are shattered, as is the film’s representation of progressive female sexuality. The dynamic of their marriage shifts as Pierre becomes dependent on Severine, a power shift that conflicts with Severine’s sexual needs in which she is the submissive dependent and the man in the powerful aggressor. Moreover, Pierre’s newfound status as an invalid could be read as moral and ethical punishment for Severine’s actions; her dishonesty and infidelity ultimately led to the death of her lover and the crippling of her husband. Rather than continue the strain of female empowerment embodied by Severine in her active search for her own sexual pleasure, the close of the film represents a return to male-dominated anxiety of female sexuality in which the female in search of her own sexual fulfillment is threatening, manipulative, and dangerous to all the men that surround her.