Recounted in flashback to a group of railway travellers, the story wryly details the romantic perils of Mathieu, a wealthy, middle-aged French sophisticate who falls desperately in love with his 19-year-old former chambermaid Conchita. Thus begins a surreal game of cat-and-mouse, with Mathieu obsessively attempting to win the girl's affections as she manipulates his desire for possession, each vying to gain absolute control of the other.
Deeply rooted in cinematic symbolism and brimming with subversive wit, this bizarre film takes a satiric aim at a decadent, decaying society riddled with political unrest and moral bankruptcy. It was Buñuel's last film and is most noted for the director's use of two actresses (Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina) to portray the different emotional aspects of the part of Conchita.
I first saw this film at University of York, shortly after its release in 1977 – thirty years later, it is just as surreal as I had remembered. A superb, if unusual film, That Obscure Object of Desire is a fascinating, humorous and poignant study of the obsessiveness behind relationships, surrounded by absurd, strange and inexplicable events.
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