Luis Buñuel, “That Obscure Object of Desire” (1977)
Between two full buckets of cold water that the main characters dump on each other unfolds (for the entertainment of a small group of breathless train passengers) a tale of sexual obsession taken to extremes, to the point where the outside world becomes irrelevant until it rudely and violently intrudes on the characters’ lives, and of the clash between the old world and the new, the aged and the young, and the hypocritical, corrupt upper class and the lower class on the make as represented by the protagonist Matthieu (Fernando Rey) and antagonist Conchita (Carole Bouquet / Angela Molina). The film’s plot takes place in a world of increasing insecurity and chaos, and this chaos is mirrored in the romance between Matthieu and Conchita who find they can’t live without each other yet also find they can’t live with each other either.
The film will work best for viewers if they consider it as a character study into sexual lust and obsession; male attempts to control women and their sexuality; the nature of women’s sexuality as inaccessible and uncontrollable; and the influence of religion, especially conservative Roman Catholic religion, on people’s sexual behaviour and the games and power plays of titillation and frustration this gives rise to. Fernando Rey portrays Matthieu in all his sordid glory as both an urbane (and possibly ethically compromised) upper class career professional with connections in high places and an easily led cuckold undone by his sexual lust. One can feel equal amounts of pity and disgust with him, and repulsion as well when he hits Conchita repeatedly in one scene. Bouquet and Molina are rather more limited and stereotyped in the way they play Conchita: Bouquet is a cool, angelic and frigid Conchita while Molina plays a more earthy and sensual Conchita. The way in which the two actresses alternate is unpredictable and seems to respond to whatever mood or feeling is required of the character though Buñuel had not originally planned the role to be acted the way it seems to be done. The end result though is that Conchita, far from being a victim of the much older Matthieu’s attempts to control and own her, ends up controlling him with her eroticism and street cunning, and she is as much repugnant and sadistic as he is.
As in several of Buñuel’s late period comedies of the bourgeoisie, organised religion gets hammered for its hypocrisy. Conchita’s mother prays at church every day but is prepared to sell her daughter as a prostitute. The veneer of propriety and the smugness of the middle class are borne out by the behaviour of the train passengers who eagerly listen to Matthieu’s recounting of his sorry experiences with Conchita; the midget psychology professor in particular makes presumptuous pronouncements on aspects of the tale that reveal his arrogance. The corruption of the upper class is evident in the fly that appears in Matthieu’s glass of water at a high class restaurant and the mouse caught in the mouse-trap in his apartment.
The terrorist violence that appears throughout the film and which possibly claims the lives of Matthieu and Conchita reflects the growing corruption of middle class society and the chaos and disasters that society leaves in its wake, in much the same way that Matthieu and Conchita’s encounters leave behind a trail of broken vases and furniture, bloodied cushions and disgruntled employers unwilling to give Conchita any references for future jobs. There is a suggestion in the film that Conchita herself may belong to a terrorist group and that she takes up with Matthieu deliberately to divest him of money that should be redistributed among the poor.
While the film is very well done and quite droll in its own way, I feel it’s not a match for earlier Buñuel classics like “Belle du jour” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”, even though the plots of all three films are very funny and improbable and feature plenty of social and political commentary. One feels that Matthieu and Conchita are locked into a destructive relationship in which they are condemned by their material desires and frustrations to play their respective roles of tormenter and victim, and that nothing can be done for these self-destructive individuals – hence the need for the director and his fellow co-writer to resort to a deus ex machina device to finish off the film.