How unexpected is it that Belle Toujours, ostensibly a sequel (although called an homage) to Luis Buñuel’s surreal classic about an posh Parisian wife up-and-deciding to work in a brothel in her spare time, would not only work, but work simply, sweetly, warmly, and wisely? The key ingredient, aside from the overarching inspiration of writer/director Manoel de Oliveira, is to tell the story as modern day, 39 years later, and from the point of view of Michel Piccoli’s character Henri Husson, who in the film had wanted to sleep Séverine, played by Catherine Denueve. Belle Toujours starts at a symphony concert, where a wistful Husson notices Séverine in the audience. He tries to follow her but she notices him and slips from his pursuit. The pattern repeats itself over the next couple days, in between of which Husson spends some time in a bar Séverine stopped by and tells of his past with her to the inquisitive barman (Ricardo Trepa). Eventually Husson runs into Séverine in front of a Parisian boutique and invites her to a secluded, candle-lit dinner, which she accepts on the condition that he reveal what it was he famously cryptically told her husband about Séverine in 1967 that drew a single tear.

Oliveira’s film is not so much about Husson’s attempt to strike up or complete the relationship he had with Séverine in the first film, one that was based both upon his attraction to her, her as a married woman, and his attraction to the secret he shared with her about her sexual deviancy. Instead, Belle Toujours is about Husson’s memory of Séverine. He tells of his view of the affairs in Belle du Jour in a number of pensive, but absorbing conversations with the barman, focusing on his rationale for Séverine’s transgression, saying that it was her love for her husband that made her want to masochistically experience such rampant sexuality, and that her experience heightened in its pleasure as she kept her activities a secret. These two aspects, love and secrets, form the basis of Husson’s interpretation of Séverine as a character and of his affection not for this character but for his memory of it. If anything, the main flaw of Belle Toujours is that its simplicity seems to require Oliveira to actually pronounce all the themes and feelings surrounding Husson, who, along with the bartender, actively voices most of what the film itself is about, and leaves little extroversion for the spectator. However, a sly parallel is drawn between Séverine’s anonymous, secret relationships in the brothel and Husson’s anonymous confessions to the barman, in a way making Husson’s secret not any kind of sexual deviancy or breaking of social norms, but rather the savored—and some might say appropriated—memory of Séverine itself. That is what is so wonderful about Belle Toujours, is that for all its lightless and gracefulness in its simplicity, it is a film that most certainly feels the weight of time between the 1967 film and Oliveira’s of 2006. This is seen in the age of Piccoli himself, of the time the film devotes to his movements, his gestures (watch the way his hands grasp out prematurely for glass after glass of whisky), his face and his speech. And it is also evident in the way the film affectionately listens to Husson talk and be, even when it is clear that time has long deadened the exciting transgressions that his influence and presence in the original story had, and has similarly dulled the impact of the character’s oppressive, darker side in the modern story.

The film is sweetly generous to Husson’s lost days, suppressing as it does Séverine’s future-past, and maintains a marvelous tone that is respectful and appreciative of Husson at the same time it considerably criticizes his viewpoint, memories, and perhaps, finally, his character itself. These criticisms are located in the focus of the film on Husson’s relationship to women, and his view of them as generally interchangeable. They appear throughout Belle Toujours in the form of paintings, wallpaper, a duo of prostitutes at the bar (one young and one old), a golden statue of Joan of Arc, mannequin heads, and, most crucially, in the casting of the older Séverine. She is not played by Catherine Deneuve, but is rather played by Bulle Ogier. The change does not seem to register on Husson, neither in the many glimpses he catches of her around Paris, nor when he finally has her alone at their dinner at the end of the film. Ogier asserts she is a different woman, though responding to the name and shared past of Séverine, but Husson brushes off nearly everything she says. He instead just seems happy to be in her presence; there is a magnificent long-take that placidly observes the two silently having course after course of their plush dinner, Husson clearly just enjoying finally being in the same room as this pursued woman, the physical presence of a warped memory doing little to re-shape his assumptions, and Séverine uncomfortably silent and awaiting presumed awkwardness. Séverine and her words spoken may just be some figment of Husson’s projected memories, it does not really matter. She says she rejects her past and is not the same woman, but Husson’s intentions that night are nothing but distant and savory—simply considering the events of Belle du Jour makes him happy, as the conversations in the bar make clear, and his nervous waiting for Séverine to show up for dinner and his countenance during the rather awkward evening is one of wistful, pleased abstraction. I doubt he is really sure even why he liked, or loved, the woman, but she comes with the weight of the past and the pleasantness of her memory for Husson, who suavely drinks whisky like an alcoholic, and seems quite lonely in the world, is a beautiful ode to aging, boldly told through an unexpected film, and from a generally unsympathetic point of view.