That Obscure Object of Desire

AKA "How many tangents can I go off on in one blog post..."

1. Why do you think the film is titled That Obscure Object of Desire? What is this “obscure object”? How does the film present it as such? Use specific imagery or scenes from the film in your answer.

As far as I figure, that "obscure object" is an orgasm. There's even a nice bit of alliteration in the translated title that lends itself to mean something that also begins with "O." The entire movie is about sex -- or about the chase to get it. Matthieu lusts after Conchita (whose name, by the way, means "conception" as in a conception of the immaculate image of the Virgin Mary -- interesting, no?) only to be thwarted time and time again. He chases her from place to place; she's there continually egging him on. He's looking for the fulfillment of his desire (which she denied him at the start) and she's looking to continually thrill him and make it so his love for her will never end. (Like in Celestina, the passion ends once the woman gives into the man -- Calisto loves Melibea as an image and will as long as he's yet to have her; but as soon as they sleep together, that magic's gone. Conchita tries to test Matthieu's love and make it last forever by denying him her body and his release.) She leads him on with the more 'Magdalene' side shining through and then denies him her honey by means of an absurdly complex chastity belt and switching to the Virgin persona. The chastity belt is gold like a treasure and, therefore, somewhat paradoxically, instead of hiding her sex, it accentuates and emphasizes. Anyways, when Matthieu and Conchita get into bed, he's denied not only her body but his own pleasure. As in Celestina, the thrill is in the hunt and not the object pursued (Conchita in this case); however, desire is desire and he still wants to be sated. Terrorism is in the background of the film and so we see a lot of explosions throughout. The explosions, of course, are symbols of lust, desire, and orgasm. At the end, we see that explosion when the two walk off together, which is meant to imply, at long last, consummation. And so, finally, that obscure object has been found.

4. What do you make of the animal imagery in the text (the mouse, the fly)?

The animal imagery is really very simple. The mouse and the fly are the main ones and both of those are prey. Both of those portray Matthieu. The mouse (which, just a note, is *the most realistic mouse I've ever seen ever*) was caught in a simple trap, trying to get the cheese it wanted. Like that mouse, Matthieu continually falls into traps set by Conchita. He's so focused on getting her that he's blind to the tricks she's playing, the traps he keeps stumbling into, and his own naivete. The fly, like the mouse, is dead -- it had escaped for awhile, flying around for days and outwitting the waiter until it finally ended up drowning in Matthieu's drink. Matthieu didn't think he was being naive; he thought he'd figured out Conchita's game and outsmarted her but no. She was always one step ahead -- her love like the intoxicating glass of wine that the poor fly drunkenly trapped himself in. With these two images, we see again the recurrent theme of love being the hunter -- the lover simply a pawn, a victim, ready to die for a quest that may or may not bring fulfillment, to come so close but never actually reach his goal.