That Obscure Object of Desire

Three years after renouncing filmmaking, Luis Buñuel returned with his final treatise on passion, perversion, and the irrationality of human desire. A seemingly well-heeled elderly gentleman (Fernando Rey) dumps water on a young woman boarding a train, leading to some increasingly bizarre flashbacks documenting a relationship defined more by repression than passion, incomprehension than understanding. (Buñuel even features two separate actresses as “that obscure object of desire.”) Buñuel’s last film encapsulates his own career obsessions: “the ravages of love, the liberating force of desire, the hatred of repressive elements, the mocking of taboos, reality as dream-state, the surrealist incongruity of chance” (World Film Directors).

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