That Obscure Object of Desire (Cet Obscure Objet du Desir)
“Obscure Object ‘moves along at a raconteur's pace as Mathieu (Fernando Rey), a rich, worldly French widower...boards the Seville-to-Paris train and makes the acquaintance of the other passengers in his first-class compartment. He seems a cultivated man...but before the train leaves Seville he dumps a bucket of water on a battered young woman who attempts to come on board...he explains that she is “the worst of all women,” and during the journey he entertains (his companions) with the story of...the terrible Conchita (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina).... Mathieu is never able to consummate sex with Conchita. She alternates between promises and postponements: she teases him, fleeces him, enrages him.... “If I gave in, you wouldn't love me anymore.”' (Pauline Kael)
“Buñuel's last film is based on the same Pierre Louys novel (‘The Woman and the Puppet') that inspired von Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman. With greater freedom and greater rigor Buñuel's version investigates, demonstrates the perverse relations between the sexes, their mutual incomprehension. Although in Obscure Object woman rebels against her objectification, she does so without consciousness of her own subjectivity, and without a language superior to her failing master's. Thus she frustrates him without satisfying herself. If for Mathieu Conchita is an elusive object (he fails to notice that two women appear under the one name), Conchita's desire remains a mystery to herself, as compromised and hypocritical as the film's other rebels, the terrorist Guerrilla Army of the Infant Jesus.” --James Brook