Sunday Crush - Catherine Deneuve - Belle de Jour

I first really seen her in the fantastic film Belle de Jour in the mid-seventies and Catherine Deneuve just jumped out of the screen and stole a piece of my heart. In the film, the French actress played a bored housewife who in the afternoon worked in a brothel in Paris. It was one of the late film we had back then and I was luck the family had gone to bed.

What I remember most from the film was how stylish she was and it was a style I grew to love that sixties image and still do today. Besides that, she was easy on the eye, stunning in the looks department with or without clothes. You get to see her in uniform, which is what I call stockings and suspenders … you get the idea and her acting throughout was sublime. She just cruised from one scene to another looking incredibly beautiful.

Then there is the film The Hunger (1983) which does nothing to dispel my growing crush on Deneuve and took it to the brim just before it over flow into  out and out lust. In the film, she plays Miriam the most haute-couture vampire to stalk a movie set. A doctor Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon already a member of the Sunday Crush) enters the picture. After Sarah meets Miriam, a steamy lesbian relationship begins, and she is "bitten" by the same vampire curse that makes Miriam seek human blood every week.

Deneuve, of course, has made a career out of the contrast between her cool, perfect beauty and the strange, erotic predicaments her characters get involved in and this film was no exception. The moody music and settings and of course the style of Deneuve pushes the boundaries of eroticism. You don’t need to see her naked, but clothed she is just as sexy.