Savant Review: That Obscure Object of Desire That Obscure Object of Desire Criterion 143 1977 / Color / 1:78 anamorphic 16:9 / 104 m. / Cet obscur objet du désir Starring Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet, Angela Molina, Julien Bertheau, Andre Weber, Milena Vukotic Cinematography Edmond Richard Production Designer Art Direction Film Editor Helene Plemiannikov Music Richard Wagner Writing credits Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carriere from a novel by Pierre Louys Produced by Serge Silberman Directed by Luis Buñuel
	Reviewed by Glenn Erickson Luis Buñuel's final, perplexing film is well-served by this disc, which lives up to Criterion standards and then some. A strange tale of frustrated sex and cruel coquettry, That Obscure Object of Desire wraps up Buñuel's career with a cocktail of perversity and surrealism. Synopsis: The wealthy Mathieu (Fernando Rey) becomes infatuated with his new maid, Conchita (alternately, Carole Bouquet & Angela Molina), and pursues her across Paris and even to Spain in an unfulfilled 'affair' that goes on for months with the woman unpredictably encouraging, and then repelling, his attentions. These escalate in intensity, as Mathieu keeps trying to buy Conchita in one way or another. He accepts her promises of intimacy only to be frustrated when she seemingly changes her mind at the last minute. Conchita throws all the hypocrisy of the male-female conflict in Mathieu's face, declaring that her body belongs to herself and she won't be bought. No matter what indignities Mathieu suffers, he keeps coming back for more ... That Obscure Object of Desire had no trouble at all tossing its audience into a total spin. Buñuel uses two actresses to play one role, a gambit that keeps us as off-balance as is the foolish Mathieu, his familiar obsessed hero. Archibaldo de La Cruz of Ensayo de un Crimen was a frustrated murderer, the spooky hero of El was a foot fetishist and terminally jealous man. Mathieu's more modest obsession is simply to possess a woman the way he owns everything else in his privileged life, and he meets his match in Conchita, a quixotic señorita with a very latin mind of her own. Is she a demon sent to tempt and frustrate the foolish Mathieu? The Josef von Sternberg version of this story, from 1936, was entitled The Devil is a Woman. Or is she simply a modern woman, who wishes to remain in control of her body and soul, who values her independence, and wants Mathieu to love her enough to change his possessive ways before she surrenders to him? Either way, Conchita wraps Mathieu around her little finger as only a wily latina can. She promises herself in bed, but when he gets there, she's bound up in a leather-laced contraption that functions better than a chastity belt. She lies to him in Sevilla, and he discovers that her 'nap' upstairs is really a private nude dance. Are the men in her audience just tourists, as she claims, or clients? Is the young guitarrista who shows up with her repeatedly in compromising situations, just her friend, or her lover? Do they really cuckold Mathieu while he watches from behind a locked gate, or, as she says, was it all a fake to shake Mathieu free of his jealousy? Buñuel has returned to one of his most consistent themes, the utter incompatibility of male and female desires. This film is handsomely shot in Paris and Spain. Even though the story is told through an elaborate framing device on a train, it's not the structural puzzle that was The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Flashbacks don't blend into surreal skits from which we don't return, unless you think that Mathieu's train companions (a bourgeois woman, her daugher, a judge, a dwarf psychologist) constitute one big joke in themselves. There's major Buñuel activity nonetheless. The backdrop to Mathieu and Conchita's private problems is a constant flood of terrorist violence. Mathieu reads about 290 dying in a plane commandeered by fanatics. Shootings, kidnapings, and bombings become a constant inconvenience. But though they happen all around, nobody comments on them. Even when Mathieu is held up personally, he can't be bothered to warn a possible next victim. The radio reports that a deadly virus is reaching the outskirts of Barcelona, and nobody pays attention. By postulating a world where random acts of terror are a daily routine, That Obscure Object of Desire takes on another dimension of creepy credibility - our world has become exactly Buñuel's world, of late. Other details are more enigmatic. Burlap bags show up at the strangest times. Mathieu throws one over his shoulder at one point, as if commenting on his self-assurance that Conchita is finally 'in the bag.' A (very rubber) rat is caught in a trap just as Mathieu is practically purchasing Conchita from her mother. One vision, that combines a burlap bag with a torn and bloody lace nightgown being repaired by a woman in a shop window, is classic Buñuel.  1 Mathieu smiles warmly at the scene. Does the blood mean that Conchita (who claims herself a virgin) has physically capitulated to Mathieu? They do seem to bicker and fuss like any other couple now ...  2 Fernando Rey is once again the perfect Buñuellian everyman, and carries a role much more difficult than his cartoonish consul in Bourgeoisie. Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina do the flip-flop role of Conchita, never once behaving as if told to act similarly. If you exempt the fact that Molina does all the flamenco dancing, there's also no correlation between the kinds of scenes played by each actress. Both take turns tormenting and teasing Mathieu, and both do the apologetic scenes where he bounces back like a stupid puppy. If the idea works, it's because it keeps us guessing, never allowing us be lulled into simply following the events as we would any other linear story. Buñuel is unafraid to constantly remind us that we're watching an artificial construction, exactly the opposite strategem of every other director's movie. The brilliance of Luis Buñuel is that even at age 80, he's such a good director, he can have it both ways. Criterion's DVD of That Obscure Object of Desire is another fine transfer from prime elements, with more pop and verve than their slightly dullish laserdisc from a decade ago. A racy original trailer is included that sells the film as Last Tango in Seville; it only serves to remind us what a conflicted, non-erotic response we have to all the sexual situations in the movie proper. In an interview extra, screenwriter and Buñuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere talks on-camera to a number of topics, including the dual-actress idea. The excellent liner notes by William Rothman are accompanied by a fascinating text interview with Buñuel that discusses the film's quirky mysteries satisfyingly, even though the Spanish trickster reveals next to nothing. Finally, the disc includes some sequences from a French silent movie version of the same story, La Femme et la Pantin, that includes a very erotic staging of Conchita's nude dance for the 'tourists' - from 1929. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, That Obscure Object of Desire rates: Movie: Excellent Video: Excellent Sound: Excellent Supplements: Screenwriter interview, excerpts from a silent version of the same story, trailer. Packaging: Amaray case Reviewed: November 15, 2001 Footnote: 1. In El, which is a Mexican movie made in 1950, Buñuel succeeded in getting an incredibly perverse scene past the Catholic censors. The jealous husband is seen preparing a needle and thread as he approaches his drugged wife. The unavoidable conclusion is that he's going to sew up his wife's 'obscure object of desire.' Buñuel impishly forces us to contemplate that which we'd never think of on our own. His surreal cosmos includes the contemplation of antisocial and profane acts that pretty much guarantee his exile from polite society. Return 2. Tellingly, Conchita breaks her pattern of tease - reject only once, when she actively pursues Mathieu as he's about to leave Seville (and gets the bucket of water over her head). She's never raced after him before, allowing months to pass while fate or chance (or dwarf psychology) brings them together again. She's the perfect Coquette until this point, so it's interesting to think that she may finally have decided Mathieu's worth keeping. What did Mathieu just do differently to motivate this change of heart? He beat her up! As with the basic male-female psychology of Almodóvar's Átame!, this very Spanish picture refuses to subscribe to modern notions of political correctness or post-feminist revisionism .... we're still a bunch of emotional cavemen when it comes to sex, men and women. 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