Belle de Jour (1967) (Criterion Collection)

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Screen icon Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, the glacially beautiful, sexually unfulfilled wife of a surgeon, whose blood runs icy with ennui until she takes a day-job in a brothel. There she meets a charismatic but sinister young gangster (Pierre Clementi) and ignites an obsession that will court peril. Bunuel uses diffused lighting, dark colours, and shadows throughout the film to temper the gravity and emotional impact of each uncomfortable scene. Left to our own imaginative devices, the result is a film that is highly unsettling, perverse, and inevitably tragic.

The porcelain perfection of Catherine Deneuve hides a cracked interior in the actress's most iconic role: Séverine, a chilly Paris housewife by night, a bordello prostitute by day. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters' and its viewers'), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel's biggest hits.