Blog Response IV: Luis Buñuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire"

Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel began his career collaborating with surrealist painter Salvador Dalí on the 16 minute short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1928) - what Roger Ebert once called "the most famous short film ever made":

Un Chien Andalou established many of the hallmarks of Buñuel's film career. First, there are the influences of surrealism. Using a series of images that mischievously flout the conventions of realistic storytelling, Buñuel created a cinematic equivalent of the surrealist practices of 'automatic writing' and 'automatic drawing', in which one begins writing or drawing without any plan, letting the words or lines simply flow out. One of the aesthetic effects of this practice was what the 19th century writer Comte de Lautréamont once described as "the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella", or what painter Max Ernst called "a linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, in a setting that by all appearances does not fit them." By juxtaposing things, situations, people, and events in seemingly random ways, the surrealists were able to create a unique combination of horror and hilarious absurdity that they often described on an analogy with the imagery found in dreams.

Using these techniques, Buñuel created some the most well-known images from avant-garde film: e.g. a man slicing a woman's eyeball with a razor; or a man staring in confusion at a hole in his hand from which ants are crawling out.

A moment before the razor slices the eye

He would continue using strange juxtapositions throughout his career - for example, in the follow-up to Un Chien Andalou, the nearly feature-length L'Age D'Or (The Golden Age, 1930):

However, when Buñuel began making feature-length films, he was much more likely to incorporate discrete surrealist gestures in the context of otherwise realistic films. At times, these were passing moments of strangeness and absurdity. Sometimes, however, these surrealist gestures were central to the structure of the film.

For example, in his film El ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel, 1962), a group of wealthy men and women have a dinner party in a large, lavish house. After dinner, they convene in the drawing room for drinks. However, as the party winds down, they slowly realize that none of them can leave the room. No barrier or threat stands in their way: they simply can't bring themselves to walk out the open doorway. The film then follows their story in the days and weeks that follow, as they become more and more desperate and hysterical, their bourgeois niceties devolving into cruelty and barbarism. 

Aristocrats transformed into haunting specters in The Exterminating Angel

As you saw, Buñuel uses such a surrealist gesture to structure Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977). The film is an adaptation of a late 19th century novel by Pierre Louÿs: La Femme et le pantin (The Woman and the Puppet). By the time Buñuel tackled the task of adapting the novel, it had already been adapted four times into film. Such adaptations included, most famously, one by the renowned director Josef von Sternberg: The Devil is a Woman (1935). Originally, Buñuel tried to make a much more straightforward adaptation. However, he quarreled bitterly with the original starring actress, and as a result the original production fell apart. One day, while drowning his sorrows in a bar with the producer Serge Silberman, Buñuel drunkenly joked that they should cast two distinct actresses in the role and then try producing the film once more. And this is what they did: they cast two distinct actresses - Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina - to play the character of Concepción Pérez ("Conchita").

Bouquet and Molina - the two Conchitas

The film tells the story of a tumultuous love affair between Conchita and a wealthy older man, Mathieu Fabert. For the role of Mathieu, Buñuel chose Fernando Rey, who had already acted for Buñuel in Tristana (1970), in which Rey played a similar role - that of a wealthy older man who becomes sexually obsessed with a much younger woman who eventually eludes his grasp.

Buñuel directing Rey and Molina

Buñuel embeds most of That Obscure Object of Desire in a framing device. Mathieu recounts the love affair to some fellow travelers on the train he's taking to Paris, so as to convince them that he is not the lunatic he appears to be after dumping a bucket of water on Conchita's head as she attempted to board the train. Mathieu tells of his first encounter with her - as a new maid working in his house in Paris. He is immediately fascinated by her, unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her, and she swiftly escapes in the night. Months later, he is mugged by three young men in Seville, including (we discover later) the guitar-playing El Morenito. Shortly thereafter, she approaches Mathieu out of the blue to return his money, telling him that they are a travelling act that was cheated out of their money by their manager.

Thus begins their affair. Mathieu visits Conchita and her mother Encarnación in their humble Paris flat, lavishing them with gifts and money to aid them through their poverty. Conchita, however, quickly establishes clear boundaries to their relationship, telling him that she isn't 'that type of girl' and is a mocita (virgin). Mathieu, who describes himself as interested only in women with whom is madly in love, is all the more entranced by her as a result. Soon after, he offers her mother a large sum of money in exchange for delivering Conchita to his doorstep to live with him in exchange for looking after both her and Encarnación indefinitely. Instead, though, Conchita sends El Morenito with a letter declaring that she is enraged by his attempt to buy her from her mother, and that he will never see her again. After he discovers that she and her mother have suddenly moved from their home, Mathieu despairs.

Two months later, though, he encounters her working in the cloak room of a restaurant, and she welcomes his renewed attentions. She promises that if he takes her to his home in the country, she will be his 'mistress' - a statement that seems, in retrospect, to be carefully ambiguous. When they arrive, the consummation of their relationship is at first delayed by her insistence that she is sick. Mathieu presses the issue, though, and although she continues to resist, after giving clear physical cues that he is willing to take her by force, she appears to relent. But the appearance is a feint: as Mathieu gropes at her under the covers, he discovers that she is wearing a corset that is impossible to take off - in effect, a chastity belt. Quickly, Mathieu's violence melts into tears, and she comforts him with assurances that she will give herself to him little by little.

Mathieu resigns himself to having to conform to her mysterious timetable. One night, though, after rejecting even Mathieu's touch, Conchita stalks to her bedroom. Mathieu quickly discovers that she has snuck El Morenito into her bedroom, claiming that he has been kicked out of his hotel and that their friendship is innocent. In a rage, Mathieu kicks them both out.

In his desperation, Mathieu asks his cousin Edouard, a judge, to find a way to keep him away from Conchita. Edouard arranges for Conchita and her mother to be deported, and Mathieu makes plans to travel to Singapore to escape his obsession. However, he ends up going back to Seville, Conchita's hometown. There, he finds her once again, but discovers that she dances naked for tourists.

In a rage, Mathieu casts out the spectators, and Conchita scolds him once again. Again under her spell, he offers to buy her a house in Seville. But once he does, she invites him over and, from behind the locked gate of the house, tells him that she despises him and is finally free of him. Mathieu can only stand and watch as she and El Morenito appear to begin having sex on the ground just inside the gate. The next morning, Conchita returns to Mathieu once again, telling him that the incident the night before was all an act. Mathieu explodes in violence, beating Conchita as she begs him to take her back.

Finally, we return to the frame narrative. Shortly after Mathieu finishes his story, Conchita appears once again, dumping a bucket of water on his head in revenge. In the final moments of the film, we hear no more dialogue from them. Instead, we see them departing the train station arm in arm; walking through Paris as smiling lovers; entering an arcade and seeing a seamstress mend a hole in a bloody garment; and, inevitably, beginning to bicker once again. In the last shot of the film, they walk off; in the foreground an explosion fills the frame, and we are left without any indication of whether it engulfed them.

These strange final shots are only a few among the surrealist touches that Buñuel intersperses throughout the film. Others are quite subtle: e.g., the moment when a mousetrap is set off while Mathieu is bribing Encarnación; or the addition of freelance professor of psychology who happens also to be a little person; or the many instances of explosive violence that occur throughout the film (including attacks by the absurdly named Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus). Others are bizarre, yet presented without calling undue attention to themselves: e.g., the dirty burlap sack that Mathieu is shown carrying around with him in two shots, and from which the seamstress at the end withdraws the bloody garment on which she labors.

However, the surrealist touch that stands out by far, and is the signature conceit of the film, is the character of Conchita. Bouquet and Molina are both young, beautiful, and brunette. However, they otherwise look very different: Bouquet is lithe, pale, with long straight hair; while Molina is more voluptuous, sultry, and has curly hair. Further, their mannerisms are quite different: Bouquet is detached, sardonic, with movements that are controlled and economical; while Molina is bubbly, exudes childlike sincerity, and has an expressive style of movement embodied especially in her flamenco dancing. Although the bulk of the film is presented as being told from Mathieu's viewpoint, the seemingly random interchangeability of the actresses creates a dramatic irony that at the same time distances us from that viewpoint.

As we watch Mathieu desperately pursue Conchita, Buñuel returns in this, his last film, to an image of masculine desire that was already present in his first film, Un Chien Andalou. About seven minutes into the latter film, the main male character witnesses a scene of death and violence, just as Mathieu does several times. And as with Mathieu, the protagonist of Un Chien Anadalou is filled with uncontrollable lust for a woman. Though she tries to resist his advances, we see him grope her breasts through her dress; and in one of the most memorable surrealist touches of the film, we see her breasts become bare, and then turn into a pair of buttocks as the man's eyes roll back in his head and he drools a strange dark liquid. Indeed, at the beginning, at the end, and throughout, the juxtaposition of violence and uncontrollable male desire directed upon a mercurial woman constituted one of the central concerns of Buñuel's career.