97/100

When I first heard the title, I thought, "Finally! Someone's going to tell the truth about the bourgeoisie!" What a disappointment. It would be hard to imagine a less fair or, or accurate portrait.

Hard to quantify the cumulative satirical force this movie brings to bear, as it maintains the same level of genial drollery from start to finish. I always start out mildly amused, wind up gobsmacked...but it seems entirely possible that shuffling the scenes at random would have much the same effect. It's just a single pointed joke that gets funnier and funnier, abetted by a sextet of actors who refrain from any winking or nudging—Bulle Ogier in particular achieves maximum vacuity without calling attention to herself…

Christopher Nolan eat your heart out, because The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie has an even wilder dream-in-dream-in-dream-in-dream construction than Inception. The entire film revolves around sextet of middle-class friend who attempt to dine together, but who are repeatedly interrupted by the most mildly absurd circumstances that are nevertheless nonchalantly accepted by each of them, spawning a bizarre pseudo-world that constantly fools the audience. Starting off as merely amusing, the joke of the unachievable dinner plans builds and builds and builds into something much larger that gets funnier with every twist and turn. The same formula applies to the ‘side-stories’, such as the one centred on the alleged deprivation of the fictitious Republic of Miranda of which one of the…

Another Buñuel and again I must rhyme;
Appropriate since it's much weirder this time.
Though unlike before where things start with the feast
In ...Charm it seems eating's like sex to a priest:
Forbidden, taboo, and declined against will
Though suffering fools keep attempting their fill.

A sextet of dilettantes (much like before)
Discuss what is proper, indulgent, and more.
But there where 'society' deemed what is right,
Cocaine/infidelity/murder's our plight.
A strange set of morals; I guess that's the key
To poke fun at people more, well, discreetly.

Their wealth and their social esteem's much less clear
And so is their odd way of showing good cheer.
Confounded by knocking at every turn,
That damned door's bad luck, yet…

Throughout the elite have a fear of impending insurrectionary violence. Which explains why they consider the poorer less civilized. And feels resonant in a cultural moment where voters in the USA are being disenfranchised. Which is ironic in a nation that had a revolution because of taxation without representation.

But this is also a movie about hungry people trying to get to dinner. The men are powerful and wealthy so they are rewarded with the most glamorous trio of wives imaginable and Bunuel uses the charming wives to seduce us. Despite the amorality you cannot help but fall in love with them all. Perhaps that's a warning to show us how easily we can be seduced (and corrupted) in real…