Luis Bunuel is the 20th century's greatest experimental filmmaker. From the dawn of silent pictures, Bunuel had been turning heads and shocking the establishment with his with his bizarre, incomprehensible cinematic ventures. He came, saw and perfected art filmmaking forever with the help of his friend Salvador Dali, on the historically acclaimed short shocker "Un Chein Andalou". The question is, with such fame achieved at such an early age, what more did he have to prove? The answer is much more. As an auteur, he continued to make some of the most interesting surrealists masterpieces of recent memory, like the Twilight Zone-type suspense thriller "The Exterminating Angel". Most of his films centered on one common concept, and that is Bunuel's subconscious fascination of human sexuality. How it controls us, and destroys us. We enter, his final picture, "That Obscure Object of Desire", and it is by far his most sexually fascinating film of all. It is a torturous exercise of patience, impotence and aggravation. In the end, he absolutely encapsulates in one movie, what the Heteronormative experience is all about. What we have is the story of a wealthy bachelor named Mathieu, played impeccably by Fernando Ray, as he recounts to a packed train car of curious passengers, his story of love lost. He has fallen for a beautiful woman named Conchita, who teases him with her graceful ability to flirt with him. For the first half of the movie, they end up following each other, and enter each other's lives as if cupid's arrow struck the both of them. With all this newfound attention, Mathieu is revved up and ready to make love to her. Yet, with every advance he makes, it is met with very adamant rejection from Conchita. He tries to use money to convince her mother to marry her, but that doesn't work. He successfully gets her into bed, unclothes her, and realizes that she has a chastity brace hiding under her gown. Time and again, he keeps getting shut out of sex, and eventually, he begins to lose control of his self-respect and moral boundaries. By today's standards, he would be accused of trying to rape the poor woman. What makes the case of Conchita so fascinating, is how controlling and cunning she is at Mathieu's advances, and as a female character, Bunuel constructs what is in essence, a feminist hero. Well, make that, heroes. What do I mean? It seems as if Bunuel has cast two different actresses to play the role of Conchita, Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina. To my delight, and surprise I couldn't tell the difference. The casting of these two women were brilliant on the part of Bunuel, because they both represented Conchita with two strong and clever females, who drag Mathieu along through the entire film, and torture his sexual desires. Bunuel has always had a knack of portraying women as clever temptresses, like the scenes in "Au Chein Andalou" which portray the female character as fuel to the man's sexual fetishes, and yet get she gets the best of him in the end. One must ask the question of whether or not Conchita actually exists? Perhaps it's a figment of Mathieu's vibrant imagination. But does that really matter? She could be real or not real, in the end, Conchita is a metaphor for sexual perversity, and the ignorance of men. As with most of his films, Bunuel uses his surrealist imagery and story telling to convey a unique form of symbolism. One of the more unexplained and fascinating aspects of the picture was the ongoing crisis of domestic terrorism in France that occurred as the story of the two lovers was being told. The film so famously ends with Mathieu and Conchita dying in a bomb explosion. It was a head scratcher, indeed. But I concluded with something interesting, and that is that Mathieu and Conchita were leaving disaster everywhere they turned, and usually when there was a rift in the relationship. It felt that it was the universe trying to separate them from each other, as if Conchita's chastity wasn't enough of a deterrent. The film ends in a very unsettling fashion, as we see the couple shopping in a museum, not particularly happy with their relationship, but not particularly wanting to leave each other. It was almost as if the film itself had enough of such inane romantic indecisiveness, and just decided to end it all by killing them in an explosion. It was truly never meant to be, and Bunuel knows it. In conclusion, "That Obscure Object of Desire" is an affair not worth missing out on. It is the performances and storytelling that are the most attractive, and as his swan song, Bunuel knocks it out of the stratosphere, with explosions.

There is no Aristotelian middle path for films directed by Luis Buñuel as they are either adored by his admirers or intensely disliked by his detractors. As a film, "That Obscure Object of Desire" might irritate you to a very large extent but it would never bore you. It is the mysterious tale of an old man who would go to any extent to make love to a mysterious young woman. His troubles start when he comes across two women in different forms who are believed to represent the sole woman of his erotic fantasies. Those who have studied psychology might see a reflection of Freudian theory in the film but it is far more simple than what one can expect it to be. It works well as the story of an old man whose very objective in his life is to make love to a beautiful woman. Although the theme of this film might appear as a cruel, bad joke, Jean Claude Carrière-screenwriter and Luis Buñuel ensure that the film discusses all key elements of the time during which it was shot. This is the reason why there is plenty of religion, sex and terrorism in the film.

Cet obscur objet du désir or That Obscure Object of Desire marked the final film by Luis Bunuel. It is his cinematographic legacy and can be seen as a reflection of his production. It was totally an unexpected film by Bunuel. He had just made, according to himself, a trilogy (The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty) of films episodic in structure and with no direct plot. That Obscure Object of Desire was much more linear in structure but just as ambiguous and challenging.That Obscure Object of Desire is an astonishing piece of work and could easily be seen as Bunuel's finest film. Like most films by Bunuel, this film has a lot to offer and is open for several different interpretations. The film is multidimensional and has got many layers; social, political and erotic levels. This idea is reinforced by the parallel worlds Bunuel had placed in the film. The new world is the world of Conchita - the world of terrorism; Luis Bunuel saw terrorism as the biggest issue of our time, and was contemplating questions whether it was justified to kill innocent people to achieve justice. He was thinking about these issues seriously, and this contemplating has clearly reflected on That Obscure Object of Desire.Then there's the old world which Don Mathieu represents - the world which is disappearing. Don Mathieu tries to get in touch with the new world but can't and finds himself taking more and more distance to it. I shall depict this a little through an example. The scene where Conchita is having sex (actually faking) with his 'lover' and, let's Don Mathieu watch through the gate. First he stays there, then he leaves, but after a while comes back. He takes distance to the new world but can't let go of the object of his desire. This idea of two parallel worlds and Mathieu in between of the transition is reinforced by the fact that this film takes place in two different countries - worlds; Spain and France. This separation to two worlds is shown to the viewer in multiple images but one quite illustrating one is the picture where first, the camera films high skyscrapers - close to heaven, but then slowly lands down and reveals cranky shacks on the ground. This theme of dichotomy repeats in the character of Conchita who is played by two actresses. The two different actresses reinforce the emotional charge and elusiveness of Conchita. Carole Bouquet represents the cold, frigid side of Conchita and Ángela Molina the warm, sympathetic side. They represent two contrasts of the character and this highlights the theme of dichotomy. It was common to use one actor to play multiple roles, for instance Jean Marais is Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, but to use two actors to play one role was groundbreaking in the history of cinema and it worked, incredibly well. This elusive character also represents a very masculine perspective of women; volatile and treacherous. But to my mind it has nothing to do with Bunuel's own attitude, it just builds up the character, and Don Mathieu's Obscure Desire for Conchita; obscure because of the elusiveness of the character.The film portrays an artificial world, which Bunuel loved to portray as the world of the bourgeoisie. This theme was culminated in one of the most famous scenes in The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoisie; where the characters realize that their life is just an act, performed at a stage - their life's fake, show, only display. That Obscure Object of Desire is told through Mathieu's, at times interrupted, monologue; and at one point one of the fellow passengers takes a clear contact to the camera as he takes a look at us. This contact proves that there is a camera - fiction knows that it is fiction, film admits only being a film. The life of the characters is just a movie - just an act.The ending of That Obscure Object of Desire is quite fascinating and left open for interpretation. The film is Bunuel's cinematographic legacy where the circle of his production comes to an end - the music by Wagner in the ending is a reference to Bunuel's first film, An Andalusian Dog. There is certain realism in the aesthetics of Bunuel, not in the perversions, bruises or honest portrayal of violence but in the behavior of the characters, and the wounds done by the actions of them. In the films by Bunuel, there are many wounds torn but the characters always try to heal them by sewing (Belle de Jour, Diary of a Chambermaid). In the final scene of That Obscure Object of Desire Don Mathieu and Conchita see a woman sewing a bloody sheet. The woman is sewing the wound of the society, healing the wounds done by the characters, but also the wound of cinema - torn by Bunuel.After this, Don Mathieu and Conchita walk away from the woman and, suddenly the entire place explodes. Luis Bunuel adored Fritz Lang's Destiny (1921) and it was one of his very favorite films. It's a film about Death who is tired of misery and agony - Bunuel was incredibly fascinated by this presence of Death and the communication with him. For Bunuel man could only live freely if he let's his life in the hands of coincidence, blind chance. But there is one inevitable destiny that awaits us all - death, in our bedroom or in the streets dominated by terrorism. The title of the film is obscure, elusive and indefinite itself and fits perfectly for this story with no end.

"That Obscure Object Of Desire" is one of the most influential films I have ever seen! I remember liking it very much when I watched it for the first time long ago; but a few days ago I decided to watch it again and found myself completely absorbed in its magnificence and the splendour of suggestive details Bunuel entered into the film. Having two actresses playing the role of Conchita represent two separate moods and even personalities of hers. It is even stressed by the fact that one of them exits the room with one particular hair-style and enters again with her hair made in a different way. The "first Conchita" is French-looking, shy, subtle and demure, always with her head bend down, in an obedient, servant-like manner, whereas the "other Conchita" looks a lot more like a Spaniard, with big beautiful eyes and slightly curly hair, moody and demanding- the dominant side of her personality. There are two more, let's say, surreal details present throughout the film: one of them being the package Mathieu lefts behind at the beginning of the film which appears to be the same as the one out of which the girl in the shop window takes the blood-stained veil, and which supposedly contains a bomb that goes off at the very end; the other detail being the constant terrorist attacks, whether shown directly or by means of radio or newspapers announcements. Apart from the possibility that Conchita herself might belong to a group of terrorists, as her friendship with guys who at one point rob Mathieu suggests, there is also another point of view considering the relationship between Mathieu and Conchita, full of hatred- love/attraction-repulsion tension as some kind of a psychological bomb that would eventually explode. As I was watching this film, I thought it obvious that Conchita doesn't love or even respect Mathieu and that he's been trying, not only to take his money, but also to utterly destroy him, as some kind of a temptress. However, having seen that after gaining the property over the house in Spain as a present from Mathieu, and after ditching him in an abrupt manner, she still seeks him and torments him, I realised that not only he cannot live without her, but she as well possesses some kind of peculiar attachment to him, may it only be to humiliate him or being humiliated or even beaten by him. Therefore, I think there are no grounds upon which the theories that she is only after his money and nothing else might be based. This film conveys the ever-present motif of dualism of human nature, the motif that stretches back to "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" or "Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde", etc. It is also about human obsession with the (possibly) the only thing they cannot possess, representing one's own Holy Grail, in this case, the disputable virginity of the main female character. The film does not tell the viewers all men are swine who only want to physically possess women and nothing else, nor does it tell all women are devils in disguise who trick men into their spider web playing the card of innocence and virginity. It simply tells the story of humanity bound to its needs, fantasies and, above all, frustrations about things beyond their reach. The sick love(?!) story of mutual torment and humiliation, but also of mutual need and dependence upon one another, where the roles of who is the tormentor and who the tormented are not always as clear as they seem.