“Cet obscur objet du désir” (“That Obscure Object of Desire” in the English-language distribution) from 1977 is the last film directed by Luis Buñuel and a magnificent conclusion to a career that had begun in surrealist experimental cinema, had stagnated for several decades together with the Spain of the dictatorship in which the director had chosen to return and work, only to be reborn spectacularly in the 60s and 70s with a series of films (several produced in France) that made history. Buñuel had become one of the important subversive voices, subtly but unsparingly criticizing the bourgeoisie and Catholic clergy classes and preparing the ground for the explosion of democracy that would make Spain the cinematic country of Pedro Almodovar. At the age of 77, Buñuel was making a film that synthesized his obsessions about the relationships between men and women, between power and sex, while also bringing to screen the image of decadence and the inevitable end of a world. The year was 1977, a key year in Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy, a year of liberation, but also of incertitude and violence.
The relationship depicted in the film resembles in many ways the one in ‘Lolita’ – the novel by Vladimir Nabokov and the 1962 film by Stanley Kubrick, which Buñuel had almost certainly seen (even if the 1898 novel from which the film’s script is inspired predates them). A man falls in love with a woman many decades younger than him. Does he fall in love with her, or with her youth and apparent innocence? Is it love or physical attraction and the desire to add her to his list of material possessions? How does the young woman feel about him? Missing from “Cet obscur objet du désir” is the immoral and illegal aspect of the extreme youth of the woman in ‘Lolita’, but the relationship between the older man and the much younger woman has many elements in common. The man tries to use the different forms of power he has at his disposal – psychological, economic and, at last resort, physical power – to ‘conquer’ her. The woman responds seemingly capriciously and ambiguously, using the arsenal of means that a beautiful woman aware of her power of attraction. She also ends up exceeding the limits of cruelty, and the viewer constantly asks himself the question of which facet of her personality will appear in the next scene.
In Luis Buñuel’s film, this question is taken to the extreme, as the role of the young woman (who in the film is called Concita, a diminutive of the biblical Conception) is played alternately by two actresses. This unique (or at least first-of-its-kind) casting in the history of cinema is partly the result of hazard, as the actress for whom the role was written – Maria Schneider, who had meteorically appeared among the stars of the great films of the decade in ‘Last Tango in Paris’ – left the filming after a the first few days of production, in circumstances that are still the subject of controversy (and of other films). Personally, I think that Maria Schneider missed the opportunity to consolidate her career with another spectacular role, which might have changed her destiny. To our luck, we were left with the superb acting of Ángela Molina and Carole Bouquet (in her feature film debut) and with an original vision of the concept of a fractured personality on screen. The role of the man is played by Fernando Rey, the actor with whom Buñuel collaborated on many of his important films in the roles of the representative of a social class that hides its moral decay behind elegant clothing, sumptuous meals and impeccable manners. A social class that is otherwise described as being under the pressure of a violent revolution that will destroy the world in which it considered itself the master. No one has described the twilight of this world better than Buñuel in his films of the last two decades of his life and creation. ‘Cet obscur objet du désir‘ – a film with a clear social message, but also soaked in subtle dreamlike symbols – is a worthy end to a great cinematic career.