.jeri.

That Obscure Object of Desire is a film by French writer-director Luis Bunuel. As it begins, a man boards a train and surprises its passengers by dumping a pail of water over a young girl's head. His cabin traveling companions are curious and ask why he did this, and he proceeds to tell the story of his relationship with the girl.

As it turns out, he, an older gentleman, employed this girl as a maid, until he made a pass at her and she left his service. As several chance encounters occur, he continues to pursue her. He tells her he loves her, but she believes he only desires her. He tries to develop a relationship with her, and she actually does fall in love with him, but whenever he tries to take her to bed, she fiercely resists. At one point, she is even the mistress of his house, but goes to bed with him with an intricate corset on.

The role of the girl is played by two different actresses. The DVD says it's because the first actress couldn't cut it playing the role of Conchita, and some say it's because the actress actually quit. At any rate, from what I can tell, the various moods of Conchita aren't necessarily given to one actress or another. To be honest, I watched the movie on my portable DVD player and it took me a long time to notice the difference. I kept thinking the girl looked different with her hair up off her shoulders! Haha.

As a backdrop to the movie there are two other things that stood out to me. One is a focus on many political bombings that occurred. He seems so obsessed with Conchita that anything else matters little to him. Also, there are several scenes that feature service employees - butlers, servers, etc. The man takes most of them for granted, although I'm not certain what their presence implies. At any rate, the man always knows exactly what he wants and always wants it to be in place, no matter who is catering to him or what is going on around him. And all he really wants turns out to be Conchita's body after all.

Honestly, he was so creepy that I was happy to root against him for the entire movie. The film itself is interesting because both Matthieu and Conchita fluctuate so often, and I liked the way it was told from his point of view (which probably elaborated frequently). It was an odd film, but definitely left me thinking about it for a while.