What’s in the box? How ‘Belle De Jour’ is the feminist companion piece to ‘Seven’
Anyone who studied high school philosophy will be familiar with Schrödinger’s cat – the cat that is both dead and alive because we do not open the box, allowing for both truths to exist at the same time. It’s a reality we can weirdly relate to, with dilemmas in our lives mirroring the cat’s dichotomy. It could be a text message or email that you predict says either the best or worst thing, and in the moment leading up to opening it, both realities are true.
In recent years, there have been very few films that have captured the glaring discomfort of this idea, with the most notable perhaps being David Fincher’s Se7en and Brad Pitt’s haunting line as he screams, “what’s in the box!”. The contents are both ambiguous and clear; we know that it isn’t good, but by not looking, the truth becomes more sinister as our imaginations go into overdrive conjuring the most evil possibilities. But while Se7en is the most obvious from the ‘what’s in the box?’ universe, there is one other film that acts as a companion to this, but with a feminist twist.
Belle De Jour, directed in 1967 by Luis Buñuel, is a radically progressive story about a woman called Séverine who begins having masochistic sexual fantasies in the aftermath of her marriage. Unable to explore these with her husband, she begins working for a high-class brothel, where the lines between her fantasy life and reality begin to blur.
Buñuel delicately explores the idea of sexual agency and desire though the erotic surrealism of Séverines fantasy world, slowly able to realise the ideas in her head and become liberated by not adhering to the reductive labels assigned to women. Buñuel paints her character as both the whore and the Madonna; trapped by her innocent appearance and the expectations placed on her as a wife, but also longing to be seen as this sexual being that can exist within many multitudes. It is a fascinating piece of work that was truly ahead of its time, with an ending scene that compliments the box dilemma seen in Se7en.
After having worked in the brothel for some time, Séverine develops relationships with many of her regular clients, creating intimate partnerships with them as they explore the boundaries between sex and violence, pushing her desires to the limit. However, one of the most infamous scenes of the film is one in which Severine is visited by a regular client who brings with him a mysterious box. He first presents it to her colleague, who is repulsed by it and leaves the room, but Séverine isn’t deterred. It emanates a strange buzzing sound, and after opening it, she agrees.
We later return to the room after the deed has been done, and Séverine lies on the bed next to a bloody towel and an upturned lamp. We aren’t sure if she’s even alive, or what took place in the room. But then, she turns around and smiles, and we realise that she enjoyed whatever happened between her, the man and the contents of the mysterious box.
But the question of what was in the box is somewhat irrelevant; what is perhaps more powerful is what we both fear is inside the box and what we long for it to be, creating a clash between desire, disgust, repulsion and curiosity. What we predict about the contents of the box reveals more about ourselves than it does about Séverine, with Buñuel projecting our own fears and longings onto what lies insides, forcing us to reckon with the uncharted depths of our own fantasies. We simultaneously want to look and look away, both alluring and terrifying in what it could say about the parts of ourselves we hide.
Sometimes we cannot explain the inner-workings of our own minds, something that Buñuel highlights in an unsettling yet uplifting way through the radical feminist ideology of Belle De Jour. Beneath the predictions and assumptions that we make about women, there are murky waters that are sometimes never seen, but through the character of Séverine, we learn that by opening the box, our wildest and most terrifying fantasies can come to life, and free us from the boxes of our own making.
