Icon of the Week: Severine in Belle Du Jour
I first watched Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour (1967), when I was the in the throes of my own middle class malaise. It’s a movie about Severine (played by Catherine Deneuve), a rich housewife who escapes her sexless marriage by becoming a prostitute at a brothel from 2-5pm every day.
I was negotiating my way through being an appropriate member of the society I was brought up in, which is upper middle class, tight-lipped and privileged, and the person I really wanted to be, which is free.
