That Obscure Object of Desire and Courtly Love or Woman as Thing

That Obscure Object of Desire

I found the actress changes to be interesting because they were generally accompanied by a mood, attitude, and overall character shift on Conchita’s part. Carole Bouquet is the French actress we first meet during the opening train station scene – she plays Conchita with bruises and bandages on her face shuffling through the crowd to get on the train. Bouquet is the stonier actress of the two and typically plays in scenes where Conchita is cold towards Mathieu (e.g. When Mathieu gives her the deed to her new house, she says, “I’m afraid of no one, not even you, Mathieu.”) We also see her in the scene where Conchita and Mathieu meet – Conchita is a servant, and a rude one at that. Later that night when Mathieu requests the aphrodisiac, the actress switches to Angelina Molina, the warmer, flirtatious Spaniard. She smiles widely at Mathieu throughout the duration of the scene, chatting and turning down the bed. As the movie continues, a pattern emerges; the Spanish Molina plays Conchita while she is cheery and affectionate, and the French Bouquet appears to play the more prude and cautious role.

Mathieu is narrating the story to a car of people he shares some mutual connection with, the two most prominent being a judge who knows his cousin and a psychologist who had provided an expert testimony before that same judge.  The choice of these characters seems to deliberately mimic a trial – a trial of Mathieu’s conduct in pouring water over Conchita’s head. Since Mathieu is the storyteller, all the details and disclosure are completely at his discretion. It crossed my mind that the director of That Obscure Object of Desire strategically planned the use of Angelina Molina to indicate that Mathieu’s portrayal of the story may be inaccurate. I think much of the story was distorted by Mathieu’s perception, which was especially warped due to his desire for Conchita.

It seems that Angelina Molina represents the ideal version of Conchita that Mathieu had painted for himself, but may have very little foundation in reality. Molina never models any traits that upset Mathieu – flightiness, indecision, or coldness. Molina plays Conchita when Mathieu visits her apartment for the second time, where she sits on his lap and kisses him and he discovers she is a virgin. Additionally, she plays in the scene where Conchita proclaims her love for Mathieu at the country house. Although it might be an overstatement, it seems to me that an eighteen year old virgin offering her undying love and chastity to a man at least three times her age seems a bit out of the typical realm of reality. However, there is no concrete evidence to support that Conchita was ever warm or loving toward him because we do not see their interactions from her perspective, but it is possible that the friendliness was entirely contrived in Mathieu’s mind. 

Conversely, Carole Bouquet’s presence in a scene tends to indicate a more honest retelling of the story. She represents the reality of the situation because she still contains the traits that Mathieu finds to be undesirable and is otherwise blind to. One of the most dramatic examples of this is when Mathieu visits her apartment for the first time – he gives Conchita (played by Bouquet) money and she doesn’t react or show gratitude, but rather just puts a finger to her mouth and stares down at the table at it. Throughout the movie, several characters make reference to the fact that Mathieu is naïve when it comes to Conchita – something I attribute to his love for Angelina Molina’s character. He is so in love with Molina that he is blind to the existence of Bouquet’s portion of Conchita’s personality.

In one of the final scenes where Mathieu hits Conchita, I would have expected Bouquet to take the role but the director chose Molina. If Molina is ultimately the object of Mathieu’s desire, this scene raises the question of what Mateo truly desired – Did he desire Conchita or did he desire to control Conchita? The use of the word “Object” in the title leads me to believe the latter.

At the end scene, Carole Bouquet is standing in the mall, watching a woman mend a bloodstained dress. She gets upset and turns to walk away from Mathieu. There is an abrupt actress change as he reaches to grab her arm. Angelina Molina turns to look at Mathieu, pulls her arm away and there is a fatal explosion directly behind her. I took this as Mathieu finally understanding that his idealized vision of Conchita (played by Molina) is unattainable and potentially nonexistent and he finally sees her for what she is. He is forced to let go of his illusion and this shatters his reality, because for so long, all of his time and energy was spent on the pursuit of a nonexistent Conchita.

I know that was rather long-winded so I’ll speak very briefly about Zizek.

Zizek says, “The object can be perceived only when It is viewed from the side, in partial, distorted form as its own shadow – if we cast a direct glance at it, we see nothing, a mere void.” (p. 95)

The use of the word ‘object’ is interesting as it almost seems to imply that we do not desire reciprocation so much as possession of love, or what we perceive as love. I found this quote to be very applicable to our discussion in class as well as to the myth of Narcissus. So much of what we consider to be love is manufactured in our minds, so when we look into it and explore it more directly, it’s plain to see that this ideal vision love does not exist at all. Narcissus thought that he loved the person that he saw in his reflection, but upon closer inspection, he discovered that it was nothing but that – a reflection. He realized that he was, in fact, the object upon which he’d pinned all of his love and desire and that he would never have any hope of attaining it. This created a void where his love was supposed to be, and that void was reflected back into his person so severely that he withered away.