That Obscure Object of Desire
On August 17, 1977, Luis Buñuel's film "Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire)" was released in French cinemas. This film, inspired by the novel "La Femme et le Pantin (The Woman and the Puppet)" by the French writer Pierre Louÿs, published in 1898, was the last in the works of the great director.
A month after the release of the screens, this film was presented to guests and participants of the international film festival in Spanish San Sebastian. True, the film of Luis Buñuel did not participate in the competition, but only closed the film festival.
It is difficult to say how things would have turned out if "Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire)" took part in the competition, but it turned out as it turned out: the victory at the festival went to Nikita Mikhalkov's film "An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano".
A few months later, in early 1978, Luis Buñuel's film was nominated for the American Golden Globe Award, but the preference of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was on the side of the Italian film "Una giornata particolare (A Special Day)" directed by Ettore Scola, which starred Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.
A little later, "Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire)" received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, but the Academy chose another film, namely the French film "La vie devant soi (Madame Rosa)" directed by Moshé Mizrahi with Simone Signoret in the title role.
In the same 1978, Luis Buñuel was nominated for the French César Awards in the category Best Director, but even here the victory went to another - the director of the film "Providence" Alain Resnais.
If the last film in the work of Luis Buñuel did not win serious festival successes, then it received universal high recognition from critics. Thus, Vincent Canby of The New York Times, who rated the film 5 out of 5 points, wrote in his review of October 9, 1977: "new film by the incomparable Luis Buñuel, whose latest work, the triumphantly funny and wise "That Obscure Object of Desire," ... - a work of such perfect control and precision - has the effect of magically clearing the mind."
Roger Ebert, who also rated the film to the maximum - 4 stars out of 4 - wrote in a review of March 31, 1978: "Buñuel... is exercising his own dry and totally original wit. His film is filled with small, droll touches, with tiny peculiarities of behavior, with moral anarchy, with a cynicism about human nature that somehow seems, in his hands, almost cheerful."
Soviet moviegoers had to wait for perestroika times to see this film. Therefore, reviews of domestic film critics appeared much later. So, 30 years after the film's release, Sergei Kudryavtsev, who rated the film 9.5 points on a 10-point scale, wrote: "The last film of the great Spaniard Luis Buñuel brilliantly proves that he was young, inexhaustible for invention, cocky, sarcastic and rebellious even at seventy-seven years old."
As for the evaluation of the latest film by Luis Buñuel by ordinary moviegoers, 67% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film ratings from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of the film "Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire)" according to FilmGourmand's version totaled 8,338, placing it 396th in the Golden Thousand.
