Cet obscur objet du désir

Plot synopsis:
A dysfunctional and sometimes violent romance happens between Mathieu (Fernando Rey), a middle-aged, wealthy Frenchman, and a young, impoverished, and beautiful flamenco dancer from Seville, Conchita, played by Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina. The two actresses each appear unpredictably in separate scenes, and differ not only physically, but temperamentally as well.
Most of the film is a "flashback", recalled by Mathieu. The movie opens with Mathieu travelling by train from Seville to Paris. He is trying to distance himself from his young girlfriend Conchita. As Mathieu's train is ready to depart, he finds that a bruised and bandaged Conchita is pursuing him. From the train he pours a bucket of water over her head. He believes this will deter her, but she sneaks aboard.
Mathieu's fellow compartment passengers witness his rude act. These include a mother and her young daughter, a judge who is coincidentally a friend of Mathieu's cousin, and a psychologist who is a dwarf. They inquire about his motivation for such an act, and he then explains the history of his tumultuous relationship with Conchita. The story is set against a backdrop of terrorist bombings and shootings by left-wing groups.
Conchita, who claims to be 18 but looks older, has vowed to remain a virgin until marriage. She tantalizes Mathieu with sexual promises, but never allows him to satisfy his sexual desire. At one point she goes to bed with him wearing a tightly laced canvas corset, which he cannot untie, making it impossible to have sexual intercourse. Conchita's antics cause the couple to break up and reunite repeatedly, each time frustrating and confusing Mathieu.
Eventually, Mathieu finds Conchita dancing nude for tourists in a Seville nightclub. At first he becomes enraged. Later, however, he forgives her and buys her a house. In a climactic scene, soon after moving into the house, Conchita refuses to let Mathieu in at the gate, tells him that she hates him, and that kissing and touching him make her sick. Then, to prove her independence, she appears to have sex with a young man in plain view of Mathieu.
After this, Conchita attempts to reconcile with Mathieu, insisting that the sex was fake and that her "lover" is in reality a homosexual friend. However, during her explanation, Mathieu beats her (she then says "Now I'm sure you love me"), causing her bandaged and bruised state seen earlier in the film.
Just as the fellow train passengers seem satisfied with this story, Conchita reappears from hiding and dumps a bucket of water on Mathieu. However, the couple apparently reconcile yet again when the train reaches its destination. After leaving the train, they walk arm in arm, enjoying the streets of Madrid.
Later in a mall in Paris, loudspeakers announce that a strange alliance of extremist groups intends to sow chaos and confusion in society through terrorist attacks. The announcement adds that several right-wing groups plan to counter-attack. As the couple continues their walk, they pass a seamstress in a shop window mending a bloody nightgown. They begin arguing just as a bomb explodes, apparently claiming their lives.

Tags: whimsical, absurd, psychedelic, satire, romantic

Review:
Then Bunuel took the full logic of the character, Conchita, as a bi-faceted character indeed, sometimes cool and calm and serene (played by the quietly beautiful Carole Bouquet) and on other times sensuous and hot and lustful (played by the fiery beauty Angela Molena).Now what can one say about this masterpiece of a film?
In the course of the film Bunuel "winks" and reminds us of his eternal dislikes of the "bourgeoisie" -here in the form of an upper class rich and corrupt diplomat- who are genuinely so keen on etiquette and good manners, as evidenced by the rat that appears on the main character's dish !
Bunuel successfully uses two different actresses to play the same role of Conchita.
Few other directors would dare to equate the male libido with international terrorism, but the final feature by master surrealist Luis Buñuel is a dark comic web of sexual obsession (too dark to be truly funny) set against a background of random explosions and political assassinations.
Buñuel applies his usual sly wit to the otherwise cynical and pessimistic scenario (one man affectionately refers to women as "sacks of excrement"), going so far as to cast two completely different actresses in the title role and interchanging them at random.
Contrary to the initial comment on this page, the director Luis Bunuel did not use two different actresses to play the lead role as a plot device to show "One actress for her placid nature and another actress for her tempermental side."While this is an oft-repeated misconception, it's not remotely true.
In Luis Bunuel's autobiography, "My Last Sigh" (A fantastic book, still in print) the director discusses the reason for this unique directorial device, and how funny he finds it that so many "fans" assume that the choices were based on the actresses temperment or his desire to "express" something obscure.
Unfortunately 'obscur' is not as startling and inventive as many of Buñuel's other films: it's not one of his best, but still very worthy.A man (Fernando Rey) step in a train, throws a bucket of water over a woman and tells his surrounding passengers (a professor in psychology, a judge, a child and her mother, who inquire because they're eager to hear the sordid details) about how he met Conchita (former maid, Carola Bouquet/Ángela Molina) and tried to win her by paying her's and her mother's bills.
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) .
"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 .
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 .
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 .
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" ..
Pierre Louys 's novel had already transferred thrice to the screen:by Jacques de Baroncelli in 1928,Von Sternberg in 1935 ( "Devil is a woman" starring Marlene Dietrich) and finally Julien Duvivier (1958,starring Brigitte Bardot).When Bunuel takes a book ,he always makes it his very own :see for instance what he did with "Robinson Crusoe" !So his permanent features are present here even if personally ,I think that "cet obscur..." is the weakest of his latter days works.But even when Bunuel is not at his best,he's better than most of the rest .Like the bourgeois in "discreet charm of the bourgeoisie" are searching for a good meal which ,in spite of their dough,they can never get,Rey is on fire:he covets a woman ,he wants to have sex with her but something happens every time he is about to assuage his passion.Besides,in order to puzzle his pitiful hero,Bunuel uses two different actresses:Carole Bouquet's character belongs to the perverse young girls with a Madonna face ,recalling Deneuve's Tristana or Severine ("Belle de jour" )whereas Angela Molina is the sensuous bitchy woman (Djin (Simone Signoret)in "la mort en ce jardin" ;Pedro's mother in "los olvidados").Religion had always been Bunuel's bête noire :here he works ,so to speak,on a large scale(the terrorists kill in the name of the Jesus baby !) and on a smaller one (Conchita's mother ,a military man's(!) widow, goes to church every day but she is not afraid of making a prostitute of her daughter .)The strange gathering on the train recalls that scene in "phantom of liberty "where the guests at the inn meet in a room in the middle of the night to chat,which Milena Vukotic's presence reinforces (she's featured in the two movies).And ,last by not least,Bunuel's final opus includes a tribute to Lumière's "l'arroseur arrosé" (1895).Quoting the pioneers of cinema,what a wonderful way to say goodbye!.
But this unique style does work.Conchita teases Mathieu throughout the film and comes across as a manipulative vixen.
Sorry to disappoint all those who were trying to find some deep, intentional meaning in the choice of two actresses for the same role, but if Fernando Rey is to be believed, here's what he told me when I bumped into him at a party in the early 90's: he said that he and Buñuel liked both actresses for the part, couldn't decide which one to use, so they used them both.Now, perhaps there was something working on the unconscious level about the dual nature of Conchita, but Rey maintained there was no grand decision they made regarding the specific scenes assigned to one or the other.Of course, artistic choices can be obscure, especially even to the artist, but Rey insisted it was just a whimsical idea, one which I thought worked brilliantly..
Conchita is no fool and her mother and the nuns who educated her have warned her, about being on her guard with men, who have their dastardly way, use her as a sexual convenience, and then go on to the next young sex conquest, She plays her cards close to her chest, and while keeping Don Mateo's libido flirtatiously in a state of excited anticipation, she leads him on a merry dance.
The movie is full of teasing, surreal jokes, and the absurd conventions of the bourgeois conformist life-style, are magically presented.Bunuel beautifully illustrates the "dance" metaphor by making Conchita a Flamenco dancer { a dance of passion and love} and then surrealistically turns the convention on its head, by showing her moonlighting as a nude flamenco dancer to earn some extra cash.
The previous reviewer says everything so I will just add that if you can find the uncut version, there is a scene with Conchita (Angela Molina) dancing flamenco in the nude that lasts a good few minutes and is not cut like in the Criterion DVD...
Much has been written here about the general plot and style of the movie so just a quick note for the purists out there and, in particular, fans of actress Angela Molina....there is a famous scene in Bunuel's movie where she performs a nude flamenco dance, however on the VHS (99 min duration) version of the film and also the DVD (104 min duration) the scene has been considerably cut, merely showing the start and end of the dance.
But then Conchita has her point of view, which everyone *should* accept, but then the tables are turned, more than once, leading to why that bucket of water was poured on her at the train station before it took off.But that's part of Bunuel's genius, I think, and why That Obscure Object of Desire works as a kind of penultimate take of the battle of the sexes.
Conchita- played by two actresses- is sometimes (particularly on a first viewing) indistinguishable from one another, and it adds to the maddeningly seductive power she has over her old, aged rich follower.What ended up making me like 'Obscure Object' maybe even more than I should have is how well Bunuel manages the mind games- on both sides- with the cunning satire.
the ladies were gorgeous..the smooth, refined beauty of Carole Bouquet and the flair of Angela Molina...but what does shine through is the evident love of Conchita most of the time...I never really thought of her as scheming...there is the tantalizing part where she wants to be understood for herself...and tho Mathieu loves her...he is possessed by lust too...maybe that is the diff between men and women...remember, Conchita says she was attracted by his kind eyes..and all Mathieu wants is...well-u-know-what...he wants her and wants the consummation..too him that is the definition of and realization of love...Conchita has no such animal intensity driving her..she just want to be loved for herself and wants to be sure...I wouldn't bother too much if the ending is baffling...I do not want all symbolism and mysteries to be revealed...it does not matter...cheers!.
The great surrealist director Luis Bunuel's final foray into the exploration of the darkest sides of human desire and will is more straightforward than some of his previous surreal works, especially The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty.
The twist Bunuel adds here is the technique of using two actresses to play the same character, the tempestuous Conchita, with each symbolizing her two sides of expression.
However over the last few weeks I have seen other films but my mind keeps wandering off to scenes of That obscure object of desire, then my like became an obsession for it, what a great film.
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) **** (out of 4) Luis Bunuel film starts off as a man (Fernando Rey) dumps a pale of water over a woman's head in front of various passengers on a train.
The ending may suggest that in some way he has won, or more likely that they are still at a standoff, even while the terrorists escalate the bombings.The question of why there are two actresses playing Conchita has more to do with Maria Schneider, who originally was cast in the role, but left because of the nudity or because Conchita's character was too contrary, than it has to do with any plot or symbolic necessity.
We enter, his final picture, "That Obscure Object of Desire", and it is by far his most sexually fascinating film of all.
What makes the case of Conchita so fascinating, is how controlling and cunning she is at Mathieu's advances, and as a female character, Bunuel constructs what is in essence, a feminist hero.
It seems as if Bunuel has cast two different actresses to play the role of Conchita, Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina.
The casting of these two women were brilliant on the part of Bunuel, because they both represented Conchita with two strong and clever females, who drag Mathieu along through the entire film, and torture his sexual desires.
Bunuel has always had a knack of portraying women as clever temptresses, like the scenes in "Au Chein Andalou" which portray the female character as fuel to the man's sexual fetishes, and yet get she gets the best of him in the end.
As soon as Mathieu begins to explain himself, we are drifted back into flashbacked storytelling; that's when the film officially begins.That Obscure Object of Desire is Luis Buñuel's final film.
But in either situation, Conchita is a both a fixture and a woman of otherworldly dimensions; Bouquet and Molina are superb.Because she is played by two different women, the point Buñuel is trying to make is abundantly clear: Conchita's allure has nothing to do with her looks.
It's a shallow thought, yes, but That Obscure Object of Desire provides us with the fact that we don't truly know how much our wants and needs can affect us until it's proved that we can never attain them.Rey gives such a conflicted performance that it's hard not to feel sympathy for him.
It works well as the story of an old man whose very objective in his life is to make love to a beautiful woman.
The film is told in flashback after Mathieu (Fernando Rey) douses a woman with a pail of water while catching the train.He meets Conchita, played by Carole Bouquet & Angela Molina when she serves him dinner, and is instantly smitten.Yes, he falls in love with on Conchita, and later another emerges.
Buñuel weaves his tale of a jilted (attempted) lover quite effectively until the conclusion which was a little far-fetched despite complimenting the theme.What starts of fairly slow and uninteresting soon naturally evolves into a suspenseful and psychologically taxing study into the obsessiveness behind relationships and how that plays out between the two sexes.Much has been made out of Buñuel's use of two different females to interchange with the lead character, although anyone who has researched the film knows that this was unintentional and has no greater meaning then necessity despite wild fan theories..
My theory is that Bunuel sat down and thought I wonder what would happen if I did this, so he did it.I won't go too thoroughly into the plot, but a man is basically tormented in different ways by a woman with shifting personalities (thus the two actresses).I liked this movie because it was so strange, the seventies were an interesting period..
Conchita is threatened by her "love" of Mathieu, & the loss of independence it would engender, & Mathieu is obsessed with his physical desire for Conchita.Throughout the film Bunuel seems to throw in irrelevant information about terrorism, which is only made more silly & surreal by its treatment (one of the groups is called Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus, with a pantheon of other silly acronyms under it) & his seemingly repeating this device from Charm.
But to my mind it has nothing to do with Bunuel's own attitude, it just builds up the character, and Don Mathieu's Obscure Desire for Conchita; obscure because of the elusiveness of the character.The film portrays an artificial world, which Bunuel loved to portray as the world of the bourgeoisie.
The life of the characters is just a movie - just an act.The ending of That Obscure Object of Desire is quite fascinating and left open for interpretation.
In the final scene of That Obscure Object of Desire Don Mathieu and Conchita see a woman sewing a bloody sheet.
Buñuel brings this to life with Fernando Rey playing an older man who has every need and luxury covered, but cares nothing for it if he can't have an enigmatic young woman named Conchita.
Played alternately by an austere beauty, Carole Bouquet, and an impish vixen, Angela Molina, Conchita literally morphs away from him every time Rey's character comes close to having sex with her.
Simply put, the kind of person that expects movies to provide characters who are morally good people to identify with will be as disappointed with Obscure Object as with any Altman or Kubrick film.
As I was watching this film, I thought it obvious that Conchita doesn't love or even respect Mathieu and that he's been trying, not only to take his money, but also to utterly destroy him, as some kind of a temptress.
It is not surprising that Luis Bunuel chose for his film the story of obsession, desire and all kinds of obstacles, including social, religious, and sexual that make it impossible to fulfill.
"That obscure object of desire" is a story of Mathieu, a middle age businessman (Fernando Rey who had given great performances in four Bunuel's films), and a young woman named Conchita  played by two different actresses (French serene beauty Carole Bouquet and Spanish sensual Ángela Molina)  who alternately captivates and torments him.
It was tossed around by Bunuel and Carriere prior to shooting that it would be comical to use two woman to portray the "obscure" nature of the character of Conchita.
It appears to be about the hypocrisy and apathy of the middle classes, particularly their sexual hypocrisy, as expressed through the infatuation of a rich business man (of a certain age) with a young and beautiful Spanish dancer.The hero, Mathieu, spends the film time trying to get Conchita into bed and more specifically trying to achieve penetration.
It was only after I finished watching the movie and read a review on it that I found out that Conchita was played by two different actresses in regularly alternating scenes.
'That Obscure Object of Desire' is Luis Buñuel's final film, and one of his best.