The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - Criterion Collection

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(4 stars) - Surrealist Near Masterpiece
In this savage satire of the upper class, six wealthy friends attempt to enjoy an evening meal together. They are inevitably foiled by an unlikely series of events, each blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

The friends are often heartless in their complacency.When the ambassador of the fictional Miranda tells his friends of a Nazi war criminal hiding in his country, the others seem mildly interested. Apparently, he was a real butcher. A woman interjects: "Does he like dogs?"

There are several laugh out loud moments, and Bunuel mixes in a healthy dose of social commentary. An entertaining ensemble of supporting characters often make surprise revelations, drastically changing your impression of a scene. In one, a woman leads a Father to the bedside of a dying old man. Before going in, she stops him and makes a confession: "I've always hated Jesus Christ."

As the film approaches its finale, Bunuel explores the medium between dreams and real life. Several of the friends experience nightmares playing on their fears and desires. The six actors give depth to their characters, and the viewer gets an admirable portrait of each. Bunuel's genius is evident throughout. 4.5/5

(4 stars) - Executeable
Luis Bunuel's major theme in this film is showing his dislike
for the 'bourgeois' segment of society. A similar theme was
shown about 5 years after "Discreet Charm"'s premiere, although
more playfully, in Bunuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire."
In what seems to be a dreamlike scene in "Discreet Charm",
a group of defenseless 'bourgeois' friends is machine gunned
without reason. Did the director think the friends
deserved the punishment?

(5 stars) - The Stuff of Dreams
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" unfolds with the absurd logic of a recurrent dream, and since the DVD has been beautifully restored, one is able to dream the dream in vivid color: Elegantly dressed guests arrive for a dinner party only to have the hostess inform them that they have arrived on the wrong night; thus, they keep making appointments for dinners that are continually interrupted for one reason or another--all of the reasons being as patently ridiculous as are the characters: a bishop, who arrives at the house and asks to be hired as a gardener, and then relates the story of his macabre childhood; a soldier, who arrives at a restaurant (that has run out of tea and coffee), asks to join the ladies, whom he has never met before, and relates the story of his macabre childhood; a General, who arrives with his platoon a day early at the same house with the same hostess in time for dinner, and then, after the General invites a Private to relate the story of his macabre dream to the hosts and the invited guests (who listen attentively), both General and platoon depart for maneuvers (but not before inviting all the guests to his house for dinner, where even more macabre events unfold.). Thus, the dreams contain dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams et cetera ad absurdum.

This film is for anyone who has ever had recurrent nightmares of waiting for a bus on the wrong corner; of being about to take a test only to discover that one has studied the wrong subject; of being about give a lecture only to discover that one has forgotten the notes; or of performing on stage with a mouth stuffed with peanut-butter when one's cue is coming up. All the absurd commonplaces that make perfect sense when one is dreaming. And much of the "discreet charm" of the bourgeois characters in this film derives from the fact that one is dreaming their nightmares and not one's own.

(5 stars) - Buñuel's best film.
This is arguably Buñuel's best film. Described as "a complex, shifting, virtually plotless web of dreams within dreams within dreams," Luis Buñuel's 1972 Academy Award winning surrealist film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie) chronicles five derailed dinner parties of a group of three affluent Parisian couples, intermixed with four dreams dreamt by different characters. The sextet of friends includes Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), François Thévenot (Paul Frankeur), Simone Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig), Florence (Bulle Ogier), Alice Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran), and Henri Sénéchal (Jean-Pierre Cassel). Although they constantly arrive for dinner parties, they never actually eat. Whether they arrive on the wrong night, or there's a corpse in the next room, their plans are always thwarted by some absurd complication. Meanwhile, secrets involving adultery, perversions, boredom, hypocrisies, military maneuvers, and drug smuggling are revealed beneath the surface of their "polite," bourgeois facade. Buñuel breaks all the narrative rules in this film. Dreams interrupt scenes and unpredictabile surreal twists interrupt the film's narrative in a way that might be described as Monty Python at its most extreme. While other filmmakers are retired at age 72, Buñuel was at his charming best.

Criterion's two-disc edition of this masterpiece includes a new high-definition film transfer, El náufrago de la calle de Providencia (The Castaway on the Street of Providence, 1970): a 24-minute documentary homage to Buñuel by his friends Arturo Ripstein and Rafael Castanedo, A propósito de Buñuel (Speaking of Buñuel, 2000): a new 98-minute documentary on the life and work of Buñuel by Jose Luis López-Linares and Javier Rioyo, the original theatrical trailer, and new and improved English subtitles. Highly recommended, must-see cinema.

G. Merritt

(5 stars) - The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie
One of the Spanish master's funniest films, the Oscar-winning "Charm" gleefully savages the manners and mores of the upper crust, employing bizarre plotlines and fanciful farce to attack the well-heeled scions of respectable society as vain, decadent, elitist, and thoroughly amoral. Rey, Seyrig, and New Wave icon Ogier head the stellar ensemble cast, with Julien Bertheau standing out as a pompous, not-so-holy bishop. Buñuel's dream-within-a-dream sequences, which involve ghosts, terrorists, and sundry other characters, are simply brilliant, and bring this sublime, extended joke to the verge of divine absurdity.

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