Belle Toujours allows Oliveira to reminisce, to be slightly playful and naughty, but still thoughtful.
Comment
06/26/08
Belle Toujours (2006)
67 %
Reviews Counted: 27 Fresh: 18 Rotten:9 Average Rating: 6.3/10
Consensus:
An unexpectedly moving sequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle du Jour, Belle Toujours is a short and sweet elegy on aging, sexuality, and the power of cinema.
Runtime: 70 mins
Synopsis: Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira was in his 90s when he made this homage to the surrealist Luis Bunuel film BELLE DE JOUR. Set 38 years after the original, Oliveira's film also stars Michel Piccoli as Henri Husson--a man just as sadistic as he was back in the erotic classic where he sought... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier, Leonor Baldaque, Ricardo Trepa
Reviews
Toujours suggests either creative immortality of a work of cinema as it flows through the imaginative process from one director to another, or simply sexual obsession perpetually unresolved. Or perhaps even a little of both.
06/02/08
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08/30/07
Belle Toujours lets us peer at one master embroidering on the legacy of another master.
08/24/07
Top Critic
Belle Toujours is doggedly inconsequential, deliberately non-eventful and blank.
08/23/07
The pace is leisurely and patient but there is a spry wit and sly sensibility behind the quietly elegant direction...
08/17/07
BELLE TOUJOURS is a minor key companion piece to the original film and would make a great double feature evening either in theaters or at home on DVD.
07/14/07
Both performers make the most of skimpy roles, raising an eyebrow or focusing a gaze. But only those who’ve forgotten Buñuel’s psychosexual daring will find such modest achievements nourishing.
06/09/07
Strikes a bittersweet note of loss and persistence that it sustains for its brief but potent running time.
06/08/07
The 98-year-old [director] Oliveira addresses the beauty and cruelty of aging with such subtlety that the movie is worth taking on its own terms, as the hard-earned musings of its creator.
06/08/07
Top Critic
Buñuel watchers will cluck with pleasure at that one; neophytes can revel in the steely elegance of [actor] Piccoli, who at 80 (when this film was made) effervesces with the joy of his craft. Belle Toujours glistens with discreet charms.
06/07/07
Falls too often into didactic post-game analysis for its delicate mysteries to retain their luster.
06/06/07
An ill-advised attempt to recall the wickedness of Buñuel's original by a director who is coming from a totally different perspective in his filmmaking.
05/27/07
Oliveira is a man of astounding finesse. The movie accumulates the sort of meaning that lifts it far beyond the realm of a director's conceit.
05/24/07
Ultimately offers little expansion on the original story, little insight into the nature of sadism and masochism in film or in life, and almost no complement to Bunuel's film
10/30/06
Related Forums
(2007)-Manoel de Oliveira's BELLE TOUJOURS opens June 8th -38 yrs. after the original
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
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(2007)-Manoel de Oliveira's BELLE TOUJOURS opens June 8th -38 yrs. after the original
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
(2007)-Manoel de Oliveira's BELLE TOUJOURS opens June 8th -38 yrs. after the original
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
(2007)-Manoel de Oliveira's BELLE TOUJOURS opens June 8th -38 yrs. after the original
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
by: REEL_REVIEWER 5/18/07
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