Studiocanal has announced the release of the newly restored 4k version of Luis Buñuel’s highly celebrated exploration of female desire, Belle de Jour. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel and Michel Piccoli, this groundbreaking surrealist film was Buñuel’s most successful of his career and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1967.

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Dancer in the Dark), the very reserved wife of Pierre (Jean Sorel – The Day of the Jackal), is prone to masochistic fantasies which reveal her sexual frustration. Driven by curiosity, she secretly pays a visit to a brothel and, unknown to her husband, soon becomes "Beauty of the Day", the third girl in Madame Anaïs' discreet house of ill-repute. Seemingly having found an inner peace through the satisfaction of her clients' desires, things soon turn sour when Marcel (Michel Piccoli – Le Doulos), a loutish regular visitor to the bordello, insists on having Séverine all to himself. Panic-stricken, Séverine quits her dangerous day job but is it too late?

Studiocanal, in partnership with the CNC, the French Cinémathèque, the Franco- American Cultural Fund and the House of Yves Saint Laurent, took the scan from the original negative and produced the 4K restoration of Belle de Jour. The work has been handled by the French laboratory Hiventy.

Belle de Jour: 50th Anniversary Edition will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download on 2 October, complete with brand new extras material and six exclusive Art cards. This release follows the premiere of the new restoration at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in May and a nationwide theatrical release of the film by Park Circus from 8 September.

Special features:

• Commentary by professor Peter W. Evans
• The Last Script
• A Story of Perversion or Emancipation? – Interview with Dr Sylvain Mimoun
• NEW Trailer
• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview
• NEW Masterclass with Diego Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière

To accompany the reissue and to celebrate work of the Spanish surrealist director loved by critics and cineastes alike, Buñuel – The Essential Collection, a boxset of seven of the director’s most significant films, will be released on 23 October. Complete with new extras for each film, the boxset will include: Belle de Jour: 50th Anniversary Edition, Tristana, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie, Phantom of Liberty, The Milky Way and That Obscure Object of Desire.

Diary of a Chambermaid [e Journal D'une Femme de Chambre] (1964)
In this adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s novel of the same name, Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Lift to the Scaffold) is Céléstine, a beautiful Parisian chambermaid who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in rural 1930s France, ingrains herself in a scandal with her philandering employer (Michel Piccoli – Le Doulos). Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder—and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.

Special features:

• An Angel in the Marshes documentary
• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview
• NEW Aesthetics of the Irrational: ICA Q&A with Jean-Claude Carrière hosted by Jonathan Romney

The Milky Way [La Voie Lactee] (1969)
The first of what Buñuel later declared a trilogy (along with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty) about “the search for truth,” The Milky Way follows the journey of two vagabond travellers (Paul Frankeur, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Laurent Terzieff, Détective) on a pilgrimage, not necessarily for religious reasons, but more as a means of escape. Along the way, the pair witness a series of bizarre incidents and, at key moments, encounter both Jesus and the Virgin Mary. The plot is non-linear and functions as a highly symbolic travelogue across time and space, set over the last two thousand years, encompassing much of Christian history that, while using satire to critique religion from a sceptical perspective, also attempts to extract verities out of the act of spiritual quest and search for meaning.

Special features:

• Buñuel, Atheist Thanks to God documentary
• Trailer
• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview
• NEW Critical Analysis by professor Peter W. Evans

Tristana (1970)
Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) is an orphan adopted by nobleman don Lope Garrido (Fernando Rey – The French Connection). Don Lope falls in love with her and treats her as wife as well as daughter from the age of 19. But, by age 21 Tristana starts finding her voice and demands to study music, art and other subjects with which she wishes to become independent. She meets the young artist Horacio Díaz (Franco Nero – Django), falls in love, and eventually leaves Toledo to live with him. When she falls ill and loses a leg, Tristana has to return to don Lope and finds her prospects changed.

Special features:

• Rituals documentary (20 mins)
• Trailer
• NEW Interview with Franco Nero

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgoisie [Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie] (1972)
Winner of the 1972 Oscar for Best Foreign Film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, written by Jean-Claude Carrière, is widely thought of as Buñuel’s surreal masterpiece. Consisting of several thematically linked scenes taking place in a non-logical world, the film is centred around six middle-class people and their consistently interrupted attempts to have a meal together. Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyrig (Stolen Kisses), and Jean-Pierre Cassel head the extraordinary cast of this most ‘Buñuel’ of Buñel’s canon.

Special features:

• A Walk Amongst the Shadows documentary
• Critical analysis by professor Peter W. Evans
• Trailer
• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview

The Phantom of Liberty [Le Fantôme de la liberté] (1974)
Buñuel’s surrealist comedy, The Phantom of Liberty, features an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses. This perverse, playfully absurd comedy starring Adriana Asti (Caligula), Julien Bertheau (That Obscure Object of Desire) and Jean-Claude Brialy (A Woman is a Woman) uses a non-linear plot structure made up of a series of increasingly outlandish and far-fetched incidents intended to challenge the viewer's pre-conceived notions about the stability of social mores and reality.

Special features:

• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview
• NEW Critical Analysis by professor Peter W. Evans
• NEW Buñuel, la transgression des rêves: A new documentary by Pierre-Henri Gibert
• Photo gallery

That Obscure Object of Desire [Cet Obscur Objet du Désir] (1977)
Luis Buñuel’s final film continues the director’s preoccupation with the darker side of desire. Fernando Rey plays Mathieu, a widower tortured by his desire for the elusive Conchita (Carole Bouquet – For Your Eyes Only). Buñuel uses two different actresses in the lead – Carole Bouquet, a sophisticated French beauty, and Angela Molina (Live Flesh), a Spanish coquette to tell this tail of sexual politics.

Special features:

• Interview with Carlos Saura
• The arbitrariness of desire by Jean-Claude Carrière
• Lady Doubles – interview with Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina
• Portrait of an impatient filmmaker, Luis Buñuel – Interview with Pierre Lady & Edmond Richard
• NEW Jean-Claude Carrière interview
• NEW Aesthetics of the Irrational: ICA Q&A with Jean-Claude Carrière & Diego Buñuel hosted by Tim Robey