'60s Cinema's Golden Goat, Catherine Deneuve

Michael Atkinson writes about Catherine Deneuve's peculiar appeal during the heyday of '60s cinema in the Village Voice.

Deneuve stars in Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967), screened Friday 11/4 at Page Hall.

"There was something about the sexually agape, porcelainized tabula rasa of Catherin Deneuve in her stardom's infancy that fed the dream lives of filmmakers fat with rose-petal mousse. Bloated and reeling, Roger Vadim saw Sadean excess and Jacques Demy saw pastel lollipops, while Luis Bunuel and Roman Polanski both saw behind their star's dewy placidness an overgrown wilderness of pathology. Deneuve could never not be objectified—she is one of modern movies' golden goats—and in a sense both Belle de Jour (1967) and Repulsion (1965) are tongue-in-cheek efforts to split the idol and see what bloodiness glistens inside. Of course, what we found were our own desires, yanked out like entrails, hoisted on flagstaffs, and exposed to mockery and gunshot." More.