The Obscure Object Of Desire

Saw The Obscure Object Of Desire, a film by Luis Buñuel, famed absurdist director.  The film is frustrating and sexy, a good culmination of Buñuel's career.  It tells the story of a mutually exploitative, mutually abusive relationship between Mathieu and Conchita.  Mathieu is a wealthy man who falls in love with Conchita, a novice maid who he believes he can have some no-strings fun with.  She out-maneuvers him however, by never succumbing to his advances, but always teasing him, giving him just a taste, never giving him what he really wants.

Neither one of these people are blameless: the girl is quite cruel to this sentimental old man, flagrantly carrying on with boyfriends while pretending to be a shrinking virgin, afraid to have sex with Mathieu.  Then again, Mathieu really has a lot of the cards here: he's got the money and the influence and he's able to wreck some serious damage to her too.  In the manner of a toxic relationship, they are both ambiguously addicted to the other, damaging and enabling in turns.  He keeps coming back either out of sentimentality or to see if she's finally been beaten down enough to let him bed her, and she returns either out of guilt or to feed her ego; to see if she can flirt her way out of this last one.  They are both eagerly participating in this toxic relationship however and both are somewhat to blame.

The film works well as an allegory for class struggle, a frequent theme of Buñuel's work.  The girl is the underclass whom the upper class eagerly seeks to screw over and exploit.  She gallantly exploits right back, stealing and humiliating and celebrating in her successes over the upper class man.  The older Mathieu has all the power and no honorable intentions (at one point he's asked why he doesn't marry her.  Answer: Then I'll be giving up my strongest weapon!) however he is only powerful as a result of his network of servants and frequently he's made pathetic by hold-ups when he's on his own.

Surely the right move for these two is to break up and not see each other again.  In the class struggle reading of this however, this is impossible.  How can the upper class "break up" with the proletariat?  This thought brings coherency to all of the random terrorist bombings and violence depicted in the film: they are trying to break it all up, to tear it all down.

This is a somewhat unpleasant film.  It's interesting to decode, but the characters and the world it depicts are unpleasant.  It's a depiction of life and inter-class struggle under capitalism, and is therefore necessarily unpleasant, but it's unpleasant nonetheless.  Further, the central struggle of whether or not this old guy will get into this pretty lady's pants is tawdry and kind of exploitative in its own right.  Which, maybe there's something there too.

Finally: I was streaming this film and the streaming service kept freezing and buffering, coyly denying me what I wanted.  I felt exploited.