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Most obviously, there is the title change. No longer The Woman and the Puppet (or anything gender related like Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman, a loose adaptation), it is the enigmatic and (anti?) erotic: That Obscure Object of Desire. (In the original French, nearly the same - Cet obscur objet du desir.) The unexpected use of obscure throws nearly everything into a muddle. Does the phrase refer to Conchita, to women in general, to anything (animate/inanimate) for which someone else exhibits a strong desire? Is obscure meant literally, mockingly, reproachfully? Like so many of Bunuel’s titles, it seems nonsensical and confounding on the surface and then strangely appropriate (if still not entirely opaque) once one has interacted with the film.

The world in which the film takes place seems appropriate for late 1970s Spain and France, except to the degree in which terrorist violence and activity seems to have become upwardly mobile and middle class. Featuring a quite unexpected car bombing early on and ending (the film and his career) with another “bang,” Bunuel casts the sado/masochism of Mathieu and Conchita against a larger scale of even more unsettling and random violence. And far from subjecting the viewer to overkill in order to make his point, Bunuel slips the references in by degrees, allowing for the true not-quite absurdity of the RABJ (Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus) to sink in and honing in on radio broadcasts that posit a world where apparently the fringe rightwing and leftwing have joined forces to wage war on… obscure objects of desire?

If you have even a slight familiarity with the storyline, you will know that the “hook” of the film is that Conchita is played by more than once actress. Two to be precise: Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina, who were both in their early 20s during production (playing the teenaged Conchita). What is most surprising is that this conceit was not Bunuel’s idea, or even his original game plan. The actress who had been hired (Maria Schneider from Last Tango in Paris) left early on due to creative differences and it was Bunuel’s producer who floated the idea to the director. There appears to be little rhyme or reason to the switching between the two (although the alternating gives the unverified impression that each actress is onscreen for roughly the same amount of time).

The use of two women to play one role is never acknowledged (even winkingly) by the film or its characters. It is simply a fact. Bunuel’s decision works perfectly because it not only mirrors Mathieu’s frustration at the failure of his every effort to consummate his love with Conchita (just as he seems to be making progress with one version, it is the other one who returns from the lavatory) but it seems providentially, serendipitously Bunuel at its very core. Further, it illuminates Mathieu’s character in that he is rendered all the more pathetic by his inability to see what is right in front of his eyes. At the same time, it deepens Conchita’s character by suggesting that there is more to her than Mathieu can acknowledge and that his inability to allow for her complexities is ultimately what keeps him from “obtaining” her.

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