
Belle toujours. 2006. Portugal/France. Written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira. With Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli. 35mm. In French; English subtitles. 68 min.
The Portuguese writer-director Manoel de Oliveia was 98 when he made this love letter to Luis Buñuel’s *Belle de Jour*—if love can be said to come wrapped in a lacquered box of buzzy kink, compulsive need, and vindictive desperation. The always great Michel Piccoli, reprising his role as the comically libertine Henri Husson, now drowns his thwarted lusts in scotch and the thrill of a somewhat arthritic chase after Bulle Ogier, who, having already played a dominatrix in her husband Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse, gamely adds new layers of obscure desirability to the blonde-wigged belle Séverine Serizy, some 40 years after Catherine Deneueve’s indelible incarnation.