[1] Set in Spain and France against the backdrop of a terrorist insurgency, the film conveys the story told through a series of flashbacks by an aging Frenchman, Mathieu (played by Fernando Rey), who recounts falling in love with a beautiful young Spanish woman, Conchita (played interchangeably by two actresses, Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina), who repeatedly frustrates his romantic and sexual desires.
A dysfunctional and sometimes violent romance unfolds between Mathieu (Fernando Rey), a middle-aged, wealthy Frenchman, and Conchita, a young, impoverished, and beautiful flamenco dancer from Seville, portrayed by Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina.
They inquire about his motivation for such an act, and he explains the history of his tumultuous relationship with Conchita, set against a backdrop of terrorist bombings and shootings by left-wing groups.
In a climactic scene, after moving into the house, Conchita refuses to let Mathieu in at the gate, expressing her hatred for him and claiming that physical contact with him sickens her.
Afterward, Conchita attempts to reconcile with Mathieu, insisting that the sex was fake and that her "lover" is, in reality, a homosexual friend.
As the fellow train passengers seem satisfied with this story, Conchita reappears from hiding and dumps a bucket of water on Mathieu.
Later, in a Paris mall, loudspeakers announce that a strange alliance of extremist groups intends to sow chaos and confusion in society through terrorist attacks.
The considerable financial loss was depressing us both until one evening, when we were drowning our sorrows in a bar, I suddenly had the idea (after two dry martinis) of using two actresses in the same role, a tactic that had never been tried before.
Although I made the suggestion as a joke, Silberman loved it, and the film was saved.The book does not identify the actress who had caused the "tempestuous argument," though Buñuel makes it clear (p. 250) that she was neither Carole Bouquet nor Angela Molina.
In Luis Buñuel: The Complete Films (2005), editors Bill Krohn and Paul Duncan identify the actress as Maria Schneider, writing (pp.
[2]Apart from That Obscure Object of Desire, other films that employ two or more actors to perform a single character include Todd Solondz's Palindromes, wherein eight different actors of different ages, races, and genders play a 13-year-old girl named Aviva during the course of the film; Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, where similarly a production issue—in this case the death of Heath Ledger during production—led to Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law stepping in to play his character's "imaginary world" scenes;[3] and Canadian filmmaker B. P. Paquette's Perspective, wherein each of the three lead actors continually rotate the three characters they play, not only within the same scene, but sometimes during the same dialogue exchange.
[4] In the 2007 film, I'm Not There, six actors and actresses played real historical figures or artists, (and some are wholly fictional characters) inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan's public personae.
It was a long changing room, and he was at one end of it, and then he said, with an absolutely loving and affectionately paternal smile... let's see, I don't remember what exact word he used, but I knew I had to expose myself.
The site's consensus reads: "That Obscure Object of Desire is a frequently unsettling treatise on the quixotic nature of lust and love".
[11] That Obscure Object of Desire was released via DigiPack as a part of StudioCanal Collection by Studio Canal in France on 23 October 2012.