The other dark-horse masterpiece at this year's NYFF, so far, is Manoel de Oliveira's "Belle Toujours," also acquired by New Yorker. Conceived as a sequel to Luis Buñuel's 1967 "Belle de Jour," in which Catherine Deneuve played a middle-class wife turning masochistic tricks on the sly, "Belle Toujours" captures Henri (Michel Piccoli, reprising his original role) and Séverine (this time played by Bulle Ogier, another Buñuel favorite) as they find each other in Paris, 40 years later. It's a tremendously economical film, with not a shot or a second wasted, yet rich with ambiguity, comedy, longing and sadness.
I guess it should be economical, given that Oliveira is now 97, a full decade older than Ingmar Bergman (and only eight years younger than Buñuel, who died in 1983). He's not just the last working member of the great Euro-art-film generation; he's almost certainly the oldest filmmaker in the history of the medium. So yeah, this is a filmmaker who knows that every film, every shot, every breath could be his last. But it's no novelty act; there aren't too many 27- or 37- or 47-year-olds who can make something this compressed, bitter and delightful. (At last report, Oliveira has begun shooting another film.)
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