Cet obscur objet du désir (1977)
Directed by Luis Buñuel

Film Review

With Cet obscur objet du désir (a.k.a. That Obscure Object of Desire), Luis Buñuel not only concludes his remarkable filmmaking career but also gives us the most cogent and satisfying summary of his entire oeuvre. It is, typically for Buñuel, a film that has far more to it than is first apparent and can be enjoyed both as a playfully ironic romantic comedy and as something far more profound: a complex, philosophical exploration of the nature of desire and our inability ever to attain that which we most want in life.  It revisits many of the themes which Buñuel explored in his previous films, Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972) and Le Fantôme de la liberté (1974), most notably the struggle between the conscious and sub-conscious mind, otherwise expressed as the impossibility of reconciling our primitive instincts with modern civilising influences.  Once again, the central character is a respectable member of the bourgeoisie who allows himself to become trapped in a nightmare-like existence in which his overriding desire (to bed a free-spirited young woman) is endlessly frustrated, to great comic effect.

This is the fourth (and arguably most inspired) cinematic adaptation of Pierre Louÿs's erotic 19th century novel La Femme et le pantin (known in English as The Woman and the Puppet).  Buñuel had originally intended to make the film in the late 1950s, with Vittoria De Sica playing Mathieu, but he fell out with the producer over the choice of the lead actress (he was adamant that Mylène Demongeot would play the part of Conchita).  With Brigitte Bardot signed up for the lead role, Buñuel walked away from the film and was replaced by Julien Duvivier - the result being the pretty but dull La Femme et le pantin (1959).  The other two adaptations of the Louÿs's novel were Jacques de Baroncelli's La Femme et le pantin (1928) and Josef von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman (1935), which featured Marlene Dietrich in one of her greatest roles.

The thing that most troubled Buñuel as the film went into production was how he could convincingly capture the multiple facets of Concita's character, as seen by the hero Mathieu.  Originally, Maria Schneider (of Last Tango in Paris fame) was chosen to play the part but the director soon realised that she was unable to give him what he wanted (highly ironic, given the subject matter) and aborted filming after just four days.  He persuaded his producer Serge Silberman that the film might work if Concita was played by not one but two actresses having very different personalities.  Isabelle Adjani was considered to play the warmer Concita, but when she turned down the role Schneider was dismissed and replaced with Carole Bouquet (her first film appearance) and Ángela Molina.  It was a bold yet inspired decision to have two very different actresses playing the same character in alternate scenes (and sometimes in the same scene).  The svelte, cat-like Bouquet portrays Concita as a charming manipulator, cool and elegant, whilst the more overtly sensual Molina makes her more accessible and earthy.  It is important to understand that these two contrasting representations of Concita are not intended to depict a split personality but rather the different ways in which Mathieu sees the woman he has fallen for.  When he is calm and rational he sees Bouquet; when he is aroused and at the mercy of his bestial impulses, he sees Molina.  The two-faced Concita is perhaps the most extreme example of Buñuellian subjectivity - the director never shows us the character as she really is, but only as she appears to the man who has fallen under her spell, an unattainable, indefinable object of desire.

Subjectivity is also readily apparent in the way in which the film is composed, with some bizarre surreal moments (such as a large plastic mouse being found in a mousetrap, an obvious metaphor for Mathieu's entrapment by his desire) and some glaring artificiality, both in the narrative and in the way the film is made.  The script abounds with coincidences which in most films would be considered laughable: several strangers meet in a train compartment and seem to know one another; the two main protagonists have a habit of running into one another in several well-separated locations; the house that Mathieu gives to Concita in Seville (and which soon turns into an expensive chastity belt) is adjacent to a bar bearing the sign Las Cadenas, meaning 'padlock' in French and 'chains' in Spanish.  The main actors (Fernando Rey and Ángela Molina) are dubbed (the former by Michel Piccoli).  The colour scheme is exaggerated, sometimes dazzlingly garish.  Secondary characters either look or behave in a ridiculous manner, and often appear like badly controlled marionettes.  All of this serves to give the impression that Cet obscur objet du désir is a dreamlike construct rather than a representation of real-life, which is justified by the fact that most of what we see is a related subjective experience, told in flashback by the main character.  Mathieu is not just telling a story, he is also indulging in a spot of Freudian self-analysis, bending reality in an attempt to rationalise his experiences.

Another unsettling off-the-wall element of the film, which adds to its dreamlike impression, is the terrorist mayhem that constantly takes place in the background.  The characters in the film appear strangely disconnected from the murder and mayhem going on around them.  Exploding cars and the sound of people being gunned down in the street hardly seem to register, as if it has become an accepted part of everyday life.  Buñuel was himself troubled by the upsurge in violence in the mid-1970s (reports of gangsterism and terrorist atrocities dominated the European newspapers at the time) and described terrorism as a kind of new language.  Mathieu's apparent lack of concern for the chaos and carnage around him may be simply because he is too wrapped up in his own affairs, totally obsessed with the woman he is determined to possess, or it could be a characteristically Buñuellian jibe at the self-interested bourgeoisie, a class that has become so detached from the real world that it fails to see how it is all falling apart.

In Mathieu it is tempting to see something of a self-portrait of Buñuel.  In the course of the film, the character becomes visibly drained as a result of his attempts to seize Conchita and make her his own.  The character (admirably played by Buñuel's favourite actor, Fernando Rey) could easily be taken to represent the artist who struggles hopelessly to capture the perfection that is just beyond his grasp and yet so tantalising near at hand.  Can Mathieu's failure to tame the elusive Conchita be read as an admission by Buñuel that he has failed to live up to his own expectations?  In any event, this was to be his last film.  Immediately after its completion, Buñuel retired from filmmaking at the age of 77 so that he could work on his autobiography My Last Sigh, published in 1983, the year he died. 

Cet obscur objet du désir may not have been a great commercial success but it found favour with the critics and was nominated for two Oscars, in the categories of Best Foreign Language Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.  Today it rates as one of Buñuel's finest achievements, an enigmatic and absorbing study in desire that feels like the perfect conclusion to one of the greatest filmmaking careers.  How fitting that the film should end not with a whimper, but with an almighty bang - a surreal thunderbolt that closes the loop and takes us back to Buñuel's first film, Un chien andalou (1929).  A woman silently repairs a blood-stained lace garment in a shop window, watched by the two main protagonists, whose words we can no longer hear.  Then a bomb explodes and the last thing we see is a massive fireball, obliterating everyone and everything in an instant.  Mend and shatter - isn't that essentially what all art is for?

Film Synopsis

Shortly after boarding a train in Seville, a respectable old man pours a bucket of water over a young woman standing on the platform.   To justify this act to his fellow passengers, the man, Mathieu, relates how he came to be infatuated by the woman, Conchita, and how cruelly she treated him in return for all the kindnesses he showed her.  It was whilst Conchita was working for him as a housemaid in Paris that Mathieu first became attracted to her.  But when she noticed her employer's interest in her, Conchita departed without a word and returned to live with her mother.  After a chance encounter in a park, Mathieu begins to pay Conchita frequent visits, giving her money so that she will not have to take on demeaning work.  In the end, Mathieu makes up his mind to marry Conchita, but she refuses and moves back to Spain with her mother.  Mathieu is enjoying a holiday in Seville when, once again, he runs into the woman who has bewitched him.  Now overtaken by lust, he is determined to possess her, but she remains always beyond his reach, mocking him as he squanders his wealth in a futile bid to buy her love...