Belle de Jour (1967) on Netflix
Séverine Serizy, a young housewife in Paris, has no physical intimacy with her husband Pierre. Drawn to a high-class brothel, she works there in the afternoons as Belle de Jour.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.6/1054,006 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
Séverine and Pierre Serizy are a young married couple in Paris. She loves her husband, but physical intimacy between them does not happen, and her erotic life stays in fantasies of domination and bondage. At a ski resort the couple meet Henri Husson and Renée, and Husson's manner unsettles her. Back in Paris, Renée tells her that a mutual friend, Henriette, now works in a brothel. Husson, refused by Séverine, speaks of a high-class house at 11 Cité Jean de Saumur. Troubled by childhood memories, Séverine goes to the brothel kept by Madame Anaïs, who gives her the name Belle de Jour, and she serves her first client there. After a week away she returns and works each afternoon from two to five, then goes home to her unsuspecting husband.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Belle de Jour (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Luis Buñuel was unhappy that 22-year-old Catherine Deneuve was foisted on him for the title role by the Hakim brothers and her lover, director François Truffaut; the pair clashed on set, Deneuve saying she felt "totally used" and Buñuel deriding her prudery.
- Luis Buñuel disliked Joseph Kessel's novel, calling it "a bit of a soap opera", yet took the film on because he wanted to turn something he disliked into something he liked; he and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière interviewed women in Madrid brothels about their sexual fantasies.
- Brooke Magnanti, a former London escort who wrote The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, took "Belle de Jour" as her alias and pen name; the books became the 2007 TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, with Billie Piper as Magnanti.
