Time Stands Still for La ‘Belle’ : Catherine Deneuve Looks Back at Bun~uel’s Classic

Luis Bun~uel’s 1967 “Belle de Jour” marked the beginning of the great final phase of the iconoclastic Spanish director’s career. With the film, Bun~uel’s dark, sly absurdist vision of hypocritical society and human nature acquired a lighter, subtler touch than ever before.

It also marked a career high point for its star, Catherine Deneuve, who played a bored Paris physician’s wife who discovers sexual fulfillment working afternoons in a brothel. The picture, timeless in its impact, looks great today--and so does Deneuve, now 51, who has spent most of the past three decades considered one of the most beautiful women in the world.

When Miramax’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought the rights to “Belle de Jour,” which had been out of circulation some 20 years, from the estate of its producers Robert and Raymond Hakim, they asked Deneuve if she would promote the film’s re-release in New York and Los Angeles (it opens Wednesday at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles).

She didn’t hesitate, fitting in a quick trip during a break from her current picture, Andre Techine’s “Child of the Night,” which is shooting in Lyon, France.

“A lot of people already know the film, but a lot of people have never seen it, so I’m glad they will have the chance to,” said Deneuve in her West Hollywood hotel suite. “I’m proud to have done that film, to have been part of it.”

Deneuve is dressed simply in loose-fitting black slacks and smock, and still radiates the lasting beauty that comes from perfect bone structure and a rich inner life; one senses that she’s comfortable with herself and not the least concerned with her appearance.

This day, she was weary from a hectic schedule and strain of speaking nonstop in English. But she’s a let’s-get-on-with-it pro, and she gradually relaxes. She has a hearty laugh. On screen she has the aura of mystery that is the mark of the truly legendary star; in person she’s refreshingly direct.

Deneuve has been making movies for 35 years, and came to international renown as the demure heroine of Jacques Demy’s 1964 fairy-tale musical romance, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” She shrewdly followed that with Roman Polanski’s first film in English, “Repulsion” (1965), playing a sexually repressed woman disintegrating mentally while holed up in her sister’s flat. In fact, Deneuve has never relied on her beauty, but has always given intelligent, wide-ranging performances of considerable depth. She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of a proud French colonial in 1992’s “Indochine.”

“It’s important to have very good directors when you’re young,” said Deneuve, in gratitude to Demy, Polanski and Bun~uel. “During the shooting of ‘Belle de Jour’ the Hakims were very protective of Bun~uel, who wouldn’t let me see dailies. I thought I would be reassured if I could, but I think Bun~uel was right; it might have inhibited me.

“The film is much more complex, more mysterious than the novel on which it is based. The idea was to say much without saying it. You had to say things with a look, which can be very hard. It was a relatively difficult film to make.”

Deneuve said that the confidence she received from Bun~uel that allowed her to take risks in playing a prostitute with kinky fantasies came not so much from what he told her to do but simply from “his aura of success.”

“He liked very few takes--he liked actors. He was very precise, but he didn’t want too much fuss. When people are not mean or arrogant but are deeply involved with their work, you don’t want to disturb them too much. I don’t think he could have worked with American actors, who are always asking what their motivation should be. He wanted his actors simply to interpret the script rather than to analyze it. He would say, ‘Please, no psychology.’ But then the best way to work with someone is to know what he’s done: What they have to say is in their film.

“I didn’t see him much off the set. I got to know him much better with [1970’s] ‘Tristana.’ It was a special moment for him; ‘Tristana’ was a film he had wanted to do for 20 years. I even had dinner with him.” (“Tristana,” in which Deneuve co-stars with the late Fernando Rey, is even kinkier than “Belle de Jour” and required Deneuve to wear an artificial leg.)

Like most members of the French film industry, Deneuve deplores the declining number of French films on American screens and the dominance of American movies on French screens.

“I’m a moviegoer, and I like American movies,” she said. “The frustration is that too many French film are not distributed in America. I must say I was very surprised that my last film, Andre Techine’s ‘My Favorite Season,’ did not get distribution here. It was quite well-received in France. It’s a story about the relationship between children and parents. Marthe Villalonga plays the mother of Daniel Auteuil and me. We have a sort of incestuous, platonic relationship with her that leaves us emotionally crippled.

“The film we’re now shooting is set in Lyon’s milieu --the underworld. I’m a philosophy teacher, and one of my student’s brother is a delinquent. Daniel Auteuil plays a policeman.”

The versatile Auteuil is one of a number of actors Deneuve counts among her friends, but says that friendships with other actors are hard to maintain. “They say actors are like children, but we’re more like gypsies, always off somewhere. It’s hard to stay in touch, and in France we do not have the social life you have here in Hollywood.”

The daughter of actors, Deneuve has two children, both actors. Her 32-year-old son, Christian, whose father is director Roger Vadim, has been filming in Venezuela and will next perform on stage in veteran actor-director Jean-Claude Brialy’s company. Her 24-year-old daughter, Chiara, who accompanied her to Hollywood on this trip, resembles her father, Marcello Mastroianni, more than her mother. (Chiara Mastroianni co-starred with her father in Robert Altman’s “Pre^t-a-Porter.”)

“To be a part of a film is what I love more than anything else,” Deneuve said. “If you don’t love acting, it would be the most embarrassing thing to do. If I stopped loving acting I would quit and think of something else to do.

“I do worry about the passing of time. I regret that so many hours are taken up by sleep. I want the days to be longer. I want to go on forever, just being alive.”