YouTube threw me a curveball t’other night: La femme aux bottes rouges (1974) by none other than… JUAN Luis Bunuel. I performed a comical double take, thence aimed a sidelong glance at Google…. That’s not THE Luis Bunuel, it’s his SON. I did several Bunuels a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. They were dry and arch, distancing in effect, but also, in their way, warm and enveloping. You don’t fall in love with them, and you don’t get inspired by their ideas, per se, you simply appreciate them and find stimulation in their provocations and witticisms. And the endless visual gags, the smirking parade of mockery, the droll compendium of humanity’s mediocrity and narcissism.
The son is no different. If I hadn’t caught the “Juan” in front of “Luis Bunuel,” I would easily have thrown this into his father’s oeuvre as an entertaining minor work. For one thing, it stars Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey, both of whom appeared in Bunuel Pere’s major works. For another, it displays his father’s sensibilities in every aspect: the surrealism, the decadence, the gags, etc. I’ve heard that Cronenberg and King both have sons who duplicated their respective fathers’ careers, keep meaning to check them out. Not so much to see if they’re any good, I’m sure they’re fine, but to see how they fare in the shadows of their legendary fathers. This Bunuel fella did fairly alright by his old man, methinks: he certainly didn’t outshine him, not by a longshot, but he didn’t make a howler, either—I really enjoyed it.
I found myself sinking into this film even though it was in French without subtitles. I was recently thinking how I’d like to learn French so I can enjoy all these New Wave films I’ve been marinating in with rather more direct engagement, so as an exercise in French immersion, I decided to simply watch this thing and not worry about understanding the words. As it turned out, the words were mostly ancillary to what I was seeing. I got the gist of it, shall we say.
Deneuve plays a character whom I think might be the author of the story we’re watching. She has supernatural abilities: she can fool people with illusions. For example, she makes Rey drop a 100-year old bottle of wine by making him think it’s a skull. Or brings another character to his knees by binding him in heavy chains. My favorite was making Rey chew on his pillow. He then carries it in his teeth like a retriever, unable to release it until the maid grips it with HER teeth and tears it in half in a tug-of-war.
Our Lady’s power renders her sociopathic: we see a flashback in which her childhood self murders her nanny by duping her (via her illusory magic) into diving out the window. This seems to have represented her moment of coming into being, realizing the extent of her mastery over human creatures. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the power of a woman’s beauty (Deneuve being one of the all-time examples), how it ensnares the gaze of others and deludes their faculties. A little shaky there, however, considering she exercises the power on women as well as men. So maybe the power of an artist to alter one’s perception of the world?
She’s a writer, after all, shown typing away—we even get to see Fernando Rey shooting her manuscript with a shotgun!—and I feel like what she’s writing may be what we’re seeing in the film, but I could certainly be mistaken, since I couldn’t understand most of the dialogue. Possibly the whole movie is a simple entertainment for herself. She and her lover exit the film by walking into his painting, so you could interpret that as the portal between art and reality. Impossible to say, really, which of those the painting is meant to represent!
Strangely, YouTube served up no ads whatsoever: I was able to watch uninterrupted from start to finish. I just don’t understand how the platform decides! If I watch a shitty 10-minute political video, they’ll serve up ads at the beginning, the middle, and maybe even at the end for good measure… but here I watch an entire 90-minute movie, not a single ad.
Ah, one more thing to remember about this film: Catherine Deneuve looks fucking incredible. Just a few years after Belle de jour (1967), and she looks even finer here, to my eyes. Sporting jeans and a sweater like no one’s business. (And red boots, of course.)