Watch That Obscure Object of Desire For Free

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

How sad is this?

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This feels like the last in an unintended "battle of the sexes" trilogy, along with Viridiana and Tristana, by Bunuel in which the female goes from passive victim to victimizer. Interestingly only the middle film, in which the title lady goes from being abused to a kind of empowered martyrdom, manages not to feel a tad misogynistic. If Viridiana is the most cinematically satisfying, and Tristana the most fully formed narrative, this sign-off from the auteur is my personal favorite. Here, the filmmaker seems less driven by ideology or anti-dogma as by sheer misanthropy. No longer trying to dispel the world of its romantic and spiritual delusions, the maestro now just wants to watch humanity blow itself up. But, like the work of great, angry poets and songwriters, Bunuel makes his hatred of life seem empowering, paradoxically enlivening.

This is a typical Buñuel film , as there is a lot of symbolism and surrealism , including mockery or wholesale review upon sexual behaviors and jealousy of higher classes represented by the great Fernando Rey . Recounted in flashback , it deals with the romantic perils of Mathieu (Fernando Rey was actually dubbed by Michel Piccoli) , a wealthy Spanish old man who obtains a gorgeous 19-year-old girlfriend called Conchita (changing physical identities : Angela Molina and Carole Bouquet , but Maria Schneider walked off the picture in protest at the amount of nude scenes) , daughter of a poor woman (Maria Asquerino) . But Conchita refuses to sleep with him . Buñuel's masterpiece filled with drama , surrealism , romance , terrorism , and colorful as well as absurd images . Surrealism and sour portrait upon higher classes , an extreme sexual obsession of an elderly man on a very young woman and their subsequent sexual rites by the Spanish maestro of surrealism , the great Luis Buñuel . "That Obscure Object of Desire" also titled ¨Cet Obscur object Du Désir¨ or ¨Ese Oscuro Objeto Del Deseo¨ is available with subtitles or dubbed and contains a lot of surrealist images , such as the sack scenes , when a gypsy carries a hog , baby-alike , and when it appears a woman mending a bloody nightgown , in fact , this was the last scene Luis Bunuel shot as a filmmaker . Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both subversive behavior and religion , and that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . Interesting and thought-provoking screenplay from the same Luis Buñuel and Jean Claude Carriere , Buñuel's usual screenwriter , and based on the novel "La Femme Et Le Pantin" , which has been used as the premise for several other movies , including : ¨The Woman and the Puppet¨ (1920) by Reginald Baker with Geraldine Farrar , "La Femme Et le Pantin" (1929) by Jacques Baroncelli with Conchita Montenegro , ¨The Devil Is a Woman¨ (1935) by Josef Von Stenberg with Marlene Dietrich , Lionel Atwill , Cesar Romero , and ¨La Femme et Le Pantin¨ (1959) by Julien Duvivier with Brigitte Bardot and Antonio Vilar . Very good performance by Fernando Rey as a middle-aged French sophisticate person who falls for his former chambermaid . Acceptable acting from two young beautiful actresses : Angela Mólina and Carole Bouquet , the decision to use two players to play Conchita saved the movie from dropping out . Maria Schneider was dismissed from the film , the true reason was her heavy drug use , which caused her to give a "lackluster" interpretation and caused tremendous friction between her and Buñuel . Pretty good support cast gives fine acting ; it is mostly formed by nice French actors , such as Julien Bertheau , Milena Vukotic , André Weber and Spanish ones , such as Maria Asquerino and David Rocha . In addition , Luis Buñuel cameo : as in 'Belle De Jour' and 'Phantom of Liberty' Buñuel does another walk-on in streets , immediately after Fernando Rey's first scene , as Luis and his chauffeur are blown to bits on their way to the bank , victims of an unexplained terrorist attack .Thid wry and enjoyable motion picture was well photographed by Edmond Richard and being compellingly directed by Luis Buñuel who was voted the 14th Greatest Director of all time . This Buñuel's strange film belongs to his French second period ; in fact , it's plenty of known French actors . As Buñuel subsequently emigrated from Mexico to France where filmed other excellent movies . After moving to Paris , at the beginning Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs , including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein . With financial help from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film , this 17-minute "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its disturbing images and surrealist plot . The following year , sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first picture , the scabrous witty and violent "Age of Gold" (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career . That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War , where he made ¨Las Hurdes¨ , as Luis emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros . He subsequently went on his Mexican period he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in ¨Los Olvidados¨ (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanish-speaking countries , though many of them are well worth seeking out . As he went on filming "The Great Madcap" , ¨El¨(1952) , ¨The brute¨ (1952) , "Wuthering Heights", "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De la Cruz" (1955) , ¨Death in the garden¨(1956) , ¨Nazarin¨(1958) , ¨Robinson Crusoe¨ , ¨Fever mounts El Paso¨(59) , ¨The exterminator Angel¨(62) , ¨Simon of desert¨(1966) and many others . And finally his French-Spanish period in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière with notorious as well as polemic films , such as ¨Viridiana¨ , ¨Diary of a chambermaid¨ (64) , ¨the milky way¨(1968) , ¨Tristana¨ (70) , ¨Belle De Jour¨, ¨The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1977) , and this his last picture , "That Obscure Object of Desire" .

A middle-aged man is obsessed with a young woman who remains elusive. In his final film, Bunuel keeps the narrative more straight-forward than in many of his earlier examples of surrealism. The only notable aspect to the story is that the title character, a woman who is by turns icy and flirtatious, is played by two actresses. No explanation is offered for this odd casting and the switch between hot Molina and cold Bouquet occurs without any rhyme or reason. Naturally, the critics and Bunuel worshippers declare the dual casting gimmick a stroke of genius. There's a clumsy subplot involving terrorists that leads to a predictable conclusion.

By the end of the film - and only because I like French films and locations was it viewed without fast-forwarding - a guess began to form on the theory of interchangeable actresses, but just barely, because the Bouquet character also is deferring, postponing, and teasing about flirtation, phallus-teasing, and seduction in her early, similarly amiable encounters with the male lead. OK, on top of the dual-actress, one character conceit is the flashback narrative story locomotion on the train to diffuse further the confusing, the train characters all appearing to be affirming and approving in their voyeurism, which is/was unlikely. The cold shower action near the opening, so-to-speak, so as not to plant a spoiler, was apropos, a welcome clever breath of something memorable and comedic. Then there's the violence toward women who certainly deserved some profoundly negative consequences, and that being left unquestioned. Is that French? French in the late-'70's? Or just late '70's sensibility? Add to this messiness some of the usually lovely French female nudity; here it was mostly superfluous. The whole running-time engendered a "what's going-on" experience. Call a film "art" and any and everything is justified by pseudo buffs and celluloid artistes, and their wannabes. Yes, obsession meets insincerity, wily female opportunism, and reverse exploitation. But sometimes films, French, or not, are just bad, even when populated by a lovely cast and labeled black comedy, "cult," or "artistic." Good premise here; very poor French execution. (And, by the IMDb rating, it would seem my op/ed is the minority opinion. But, for consideration orientation, I liked "The Tree of Life," and got it - though it needed tighter editing for a shorter running time.)