That Obscure Object of Desire

The final film in director Luis Buñuel's magnificent filmography, 'That Obscure Object of Desire' continues the filmmaker's unique, surrealist, and often oblique stylings with a humorously brutal glimpse into the notions of obsession, yearning, possession and autonomy that is highlighted by a cleverly understated visual manipulation of the story in which two actresses, Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina, portray the titular object of desire, Conchita, who changes and effectively ruins the life of a wealthy, indulgent, but overly possessive businessman.

Prolific Spanish actor Fernando Rey, who had previously worked with Buñuel on 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,' 'Tristana' and 'Viridana' – though he's most likely known to American audiences as the slippery criminal Alain Charnier in the Academy Award-winning crime drama 'The French Connection' – teamed up with the director one final time as the aforementioned wealthy businessman Mathieu, or Don Matteo. Rey's Mathieu is at first simply a somewhat lecherous older man who is immediately taken by the beauty of his newly appointed maid, Conchita, but Mathieu soon finds that although he can provide her with nearly unlimited material gain, she rebuffs his sexual advances, refusing to give herself over to Mathieu, despite mutual claims of true affection between the two.

'That Obscure Object of Desire' turns on its assessment of both Mathieu's intense desire – one so powerful and concentrated that he cannot tell the woman he's so enraptured by is (depending on how you choose to look at the film) two different women – as well as the physical and emotional transience of Conchita – which accounts for the dual performances by Bouquet and Molina. At its surface, it is a surreal glimpse into carnality and asceticism wherein a man unfamiliar with refusal seeks to possess something beautiful. Try as he might, Mathieu's deep pockets, luxurious lifestyle and generous nature fail to fully ensnare Conchita, to entice her to give herself over to him.

Buñuel and his frequent co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière brilliantly depict what begins as a forbidden relationship: a lustful longing for a woman decades a wealthy man's junior, and turn it into a maddening pursuit of gratification that remains as unobtainable as a woman who is so impermanent, transient and intangible that she's comprised of two different people. Conchita does as she pleases; she is a free spirit, and yet in her free spiritedness, she is moving against social practices, and the loosening of moral standards that were rapidly becoming more conventional at the time.

There are suggestions that the two women play Conchita depending on the shifts in her mood, and, to a certain extent, that is true. But Buñuel and Carrière aren't playing by such hard-and-fast rules as to which actress inhabits the character at any given moment; they don't want to make it that easy. It is accurate to state that one of the women – probably Bouquet – gives the colder, more distant and aloof performance, while Molina is far more passionate, but still transitory – exemplified in her becoming a nude flamenco dancer and by appearing to give herself to a young musician in front of Mathieu while he's on the other side of a locked gate. Despite what appears to be firm differences between the two actresses, Buñuel manages to create a gray area they both inhabit that keeps Conchita capricious, impulsive and, most importantly inconstant.

But the film is more multifaceted than the examination of one man's possessive desire, and the said object's attempt at refuting social mores, which had become almost commonplace thanks to the sexual revolution, the power of feminist movement and the availability of birth control. 'That Obscure Object of Desire' also takes place against the backdrop of a terrorist uprising, which plays into Buñuel's frequent examinations of subversive cultures and anti-establishment movements. This kind of thematic layering is commonplace in Buñuel's films, and he does his best to augment it with the addition of sometimes-divisive mysteries or ambiguous visual cues, like a fly in Mathieu's martini, the burlap sack he's seen carrying on occasion and, especially, the pig wrapped up and carried like a child by a woman in a Seville courtyard.

Buñuel purposely keeps many of these aspects from having clear, straightforward answers; and in doing so, the film not only lives up to its title, but he also makes 'That Obscure Object of Desire' something worthy of discussion, decades after its initial release. This is fitting not only for one of Buñuel's films – which frequently caused debate and spawned incredibly divisive opinions – but it is also an example of how a director, known for his biting wit and satirical eye could still craft such an insightful, sardonic film, targeting materialism, political upheaval and the corrosion of modern societal ethics, at such a late stage in his career. This may be Buñuel's final work, but it still stands as one of his finest.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

Hailing from Studio Canal and Lionsgate, 'That Obscure Object of Desire' is a single disc in the average keep case, featuring the same cover art as its European release. The disc moves right into the top menu, which then allows the viewer to choose between the original audio track and its dubbed counterpart. While this release appears to have all of the supplements of the European release, it does not include the booklet with an essay on the film that was a part of that edition.