That Obscure Object of Desire
- sombre
- inventive
- bleak
- cold
- signature
Sombre, steady, measured drama / romance, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →After dumping a bucket of water on a beautiful young woman from the window of a train car, wealthy Frenchman Mathieu, regales his fellow passengers with the story of the dysfunctional relationship between himself and the young woman in question, a fiery 19-year-old flamenco dancer named Conchita. What follows is a tale of cruelty, depravity and lies -- the very building blocks of love.
Our read · That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) reads as a sombre, steady, inventive drama · romance entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
Availability in the UK · via JustWatch
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The shape of That Obscure Object of Desire
What watching it is actually like.
“You crave Buñuel's cruel romance puzzles about desire, class, and two faces of one woman.”
Skip it tonight — Frustrating love games and arthouse subtitles aren't your late-night mood.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
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