In 1967, cult director Luis Buñuel shot what became one of the masterpieces of filmed surrealism, Belle De Jour. 39 years later, another Iberian master decides to return to that story and to imagine its continuation in Belle Toujours, starring in the same role of nearly four decades ago the same actor, Michel Piccoli. If would not be so uncommon to film a sequel ages after the original (right, George Lucas? Oh, no wait. Yours was a prequel, that makes all the difference!), but the director of this new movie is Manoel De Oliveira, award-winning Portuguese director who in 2006 turned 98. He was 60 years old when the first movie was shot. Do not get sidetracked: De Oliveira may be of age, but he is definitely like wine: he improves with time. And this could as well become one of his masterpieces. Just to give a few pointers, Belle De Jour was the tragic story of a young woman, Séverine, gifted with a kinky set of sex fantasies, happily married, but unable to become physically comfortable with her husband. To overcome the problem and to satisfy her fantasies, she manages to get hired as a prostitute in a brothel, where she only works during the day (hence the title), but she is caught on the job by the best friend of her husband, Henri Husson, who eventually reveals her secret. The movie ended without explaining what happened to Séverine: abandoned by her husband? prostitute for life? forgiven? De Oliveira imagines Husson, who has naturally become a person of age, casually bumping into the now old Séverine. The woman is reluctant to talk to the man who revealed her shameful profession but eventually accepts an invitation for dinner. And it is at that dinner table that the confrontation between the two takes place (and also takes most of the movie). Piccoli, who played Husson then and still has that role today, is phenomenal in that part. Séverine, in 1967 Catherine Deneuve, today has the face of Bulle Ogier and this is sort of a pity: in which other occasion you have the chance to film a sequel of a movie and have alive and still acting both the actors? Nevertheless, Belle Toujours is definitely worth seeing: nobody can describe better the sense of time passing as De Oliveira.