Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 11/20/2001
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: French/English
Sound: 5.1/1
Run Time: 104 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Profanity
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
Adapted from
Pierre Louys' 1898 novel
La Femme et le Pantin,
That Obscure Object of Desire is the 30th and final film from the great
Luis Buñuel. Recounted in flashback to a group of railway travellers, the story wryly details the romantic perils of Mathieu (
Buñuel favorite
Fernando Rey), a wealthy, middle-aged French sophisticate who falls desperately in love with his 19-year-old former chambermaid Conchita. Thus begins a surreal game of sexual cat-and-mouse, with Mathieu obsessively attempting to win the girl's affections as she manipulates his carnal desires, each vying to gain absolute control of the other. Brimming with the subversive wit which characterizes all of
Buñuel's finest work,
That Obscure Object of Desire takes satiric aim at a decadent, decaying society riddled by political unrest and moral bankruptcy. The picture is absurdist even in its casting --
Rey's dialogue was dubbed by the French actor
Michel Piccoli, while the two-faced, hot-and-cold Conchita is played, logically enough, by two different actresses (
Carole Bouquet and
Angela Molina, respectively), with the character's dialogue spoken by yet a third performer. The same
Louys novel was also filmed by
Josef von Sternberg in 1935 as the
Marlene Dietrich vehicle
The Devil Is a Woman, and again in 1959 as
Julien Duvivier's
La Femme et le Pantin, starring
Brigitte Bardot.
~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
;)
