That Obscure Object of Desire

Buñuel, for the last time, explores favourite themes of violence, desire, and denial. Like the woman in Buñuel's first feature L'Age d'Or, whose sexual frustration leads her to suck the toes of a statue, Fernando Rey's character is utterly perplexed by the elusive object of his passions; a woman who alternates between a seductive smouldering sensuality and an icy devotion to chastity. Buñuel, being a staunch advocate of the uncanny, pulls off the remarkable feat of casting two different women (Angela Molina & Carole Bouquet) in the same central role, one embodying sexual warmth, the other a concerted coldness.

Naturally, much of the appeal of That Obscure Object... is dependent on the comedy inherent in Rey's situation: a ridiculous desperate, vain, old man chasing a woman half his age, constantly imagining that he's on the verge of making a conquest only to fall flat on his face once again.

The film's teasing nature is continued with a strange, unexplained sub-narrative involving an obsure terrorist campaign whose activities are alluded to through media reports and nearby bombings.

Buñuel's last movie revisits many of his favourite thematic haunts and is fittingly esoteric and amusing.

Review by Iain Harral
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96