'Belle de Jour' is revisited - but without Deneuve

One of the great classics of erotic cinema for the thinking man - and woman - is revisited in a French-Portuguese movie released in France this week.

Belle Toujours, directed by Manoel de Oliveira, has two of the same principal characters as the Luis Bunuel movie, Belle de Jour, made in 1967. It is not a re-make, but an exploration of the memories, fantasies, frustrations and regrets of the same characters, 40 years later.

The French actress Catherine Deneuve, who made her international reputation in Belle de Jour, refused an offer to play Séverine in the new movie. The French actor Michel Piccoli, 71, does appear once again as Husson, a treacherous, alcoholic and now elderly playboy. The French theatre and cinema actress Bulle Ogier, 67, takes the role which was played 40 years ago by Deneuve.

In Belle de Jour, which was based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, Séverine is a young, beautiful and wealthy doctor's wife who becomes a prostitute during the day to exorcise her sexual fantasies. In the new movie, she is widowed and about the enter a convent. She agrees to a final meeting over dinner with Husson - a friend of her husband who had helped, and exploited her, in her secret life 40 years earlier. Belle Toujours has had enthusiastic reviews in the French press. The critic for Le Monde described it as a "pitiless examination" of "human perversity".

M. Piccoli said the film was "a delicious, perfect farce", but also "a hommage to women and the questions that they ask of themselves".

Asked whether he had tried to persuade Catherine Deneuve to appear in the new movie, he said: "There was no question of changing her mind. When Catherine Deneuve says, 'No, I can't see the point', there's nothing you can say."

Deneuve has an ambiguous relationship with Belle de Jour. In an interview three years ago, she said she had felt exploited at the time (she was 24) and "over-exposed physically and emotionally" by the Spanish director, Luis Bunuel. However, she also said she recognised Belle de Jour was a "great film" and one of her best performances on the screen.

M. Piccoli said that he thought Mme Deneuve was right to refuse to appear in the new film because, at the age of 64, she still looked much as she did in Belle de Jour.

"It was best to leave the Bunuel film intact and use doubles. I am a double myself, because I do look 40 years older," he said.

In the new movie, which is expected to appear in Britain in the autumn, Husson spots Séverine again after many years, at a concert in Paris. He tries to arrange a meeting with her but she eludes him.

Finally, just before she enters a convent, she agrees to meet Husson to discuss what happened four decades before. Most of all, she wants him to answer a question which is still torturing her: did her husband know about her clandestine activities?

Sequels to movies are commonplace, but sequels whose action takes place four decades later are almost unknown.

Le Monde described the new movie as a tribute to Bunuel. It said that the Portuguese director, Manoel de Oliveira, had the same "taste for frustrated love and unsolved enigmas, for the secrets of virgin and profaned bodies".