Ari Benjamin Meyers
Belle Comme le Jour
a film by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera
2012
film music by Ari Benjamin Meyers // for 18 violas
BELLE COMME LE JOUR (2012)
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster & Tristan Bera
A prequel to Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967)
& Manoel de Oliveira's Belle Toujours (2006)
It's the story of Séverine before she married Pierre
and became Belle de jour.
Staying at the Hotel Regina next to rue de Rivoli,
she goes to visit the Louvre and has a deeply
disturbing conversation with a complete stranger.
He tells her a story about a saint and a bitch
which makes a devastating impression on her...
BELLE COMME LE JOUR is the story of a young Parisian student,
a passionate movie-goer in the 2010s
and a Catherine Deneuve look-alike
who reenacts her favorite movie scenes.
With outfits by Nicolas Ghesquière for Balenciaga.
It's also a New Wave story ; A retro film played by the young Juliette de
Ferluc
magnetically obsessed by fashion photographer Giasco Bertoli,
also a look-alike of Marcello Mastroianni.
BELLE COMME LE JOUR is an existential film which explores
the first fictional encounter of a legendary screen and life couple
and their love filmography:
Catherine Deneuve & Marcello Mastroianni,
the ultimate image of a cinematic passion.
BELLE COMME LE JOUR is a Paris-based film museum
which puts together
Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind,
Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Marnie,
Claude Autant-Lara's En cas de Malheur,
Roman Polanski's Repulsion,
Luis Bunuel's Golden Age, Belle de Jour, Tristana, That Obscur Object of Desire,
Jean-Paul Rappeneau's La Vie de Château,
François Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid,
Alain Resnais's Last year in Marienbad,
Marco Ferrerri's La Cagna,
Jacques Demy's Peau d'Ane,
Tony Scott's Hunger,
Brian dePalma's Dressed to kill,
Manoel de Oliveira's Belle toujours,
in the frame of the Venus de Milo's room in Louvre.
Like in Last Year in Marienbad
repetition becomes a way to enlighten cinema.
With music inspired by Wagner's Tristan & Bernard Hermann's Vertigo
and composed by Ari Benjamin Meyers.
BELLE COMME LE JOUR is the story of S.,
the study of a masochistic clinical case.
A young girl who has a secret trauma
and has to have a double life
which questions pleasure and submission.
With a cover of Velvet Underground's Venus in furs by Arto Lindsay
faux fur.