Synopsis
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
1972 ‘Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie’ Directed by Luis Buñuel
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
Fernando Rey Delphine Seyrig Paul Frankeur Bulle Ogier Stéphane Audran Jean-Pierre Cassel Julien Bertheau Claude Piéplu Michel Piccoli François Maistre Pierre Maguelon Maxence Mailfort Milena Vukotić Maria Gabriella Maione Muni Georges Douking Christian Baltauss Bernard Musson Jacques Rispal Robert le Béal Robert Benoît Anne-Marie Deschodt Ellen Bahl Jean-Michel Dhermay Jean Degrave Sébastien Floche Claude Jaeger Pierre Lary Alix Mahieux Show All…
中产阶级的诱惑, 中产阶级的审慎魅力, 资产阶级的魅力, 中产阶级拘谨的魅力, 부르주아의 은밀한 매력
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…
What can I say; I think I’ve found a new favourite director after a single film.
Buñuel has the same high regard for both his characters and audience alike. Like a cat with a mouse, he toys with them; tosses them up in the air, bats them about a while, then sits back and watches them wobble and stumble about; all the time his tail gingerly flicking. Just when you think you have your bearings; and escape into a lush field of meaning is within grasp; he pounces again.
I’ve read that Buñuel was an accomplished hypnotist in his youth, and that he believed that the movies were a form of hypnotism. I believe it; I’m still in a trance.
90/100
A winding, inescapable nightmare separated by emptiness. If this wasn't so harshly hilarious it would be impossible to take in, mainly because entitlement doesn't seem like a topic to showcase without a certain measure of levity. Its structure, beginning like an awkward play of misunderstandings, soon dissolves into a satirical depiction of grating realities, utilizing the energy of chaos as a contrast between the consistently still and contained imagery. Even the most surrealistic incident within this dreamlike series of events carries an unflinching eye, viewing all the strange and despicable behavior like a curious animal; wide-eyed and casually attentive.
Don't you hate it when restaurants run out of water?
I really thought “French Airplane” (my takeaway) was the wrong takeaway. But then I looked up every other review/critique/essay (Ebert, Sciretta etc.) and found they had all written the exact same: French Airplane!
Holy bejeezus, what an odd film. I mean truly odd. Not in the Lynch way, though, but in some completely new way. Sometimes it plays out like a Monty Python skit. Sometimes it feels like French New Wave. Sometimes it feels like a laugh track is missing. Sometimes it comes this close to slapstick but without the pay-off. It is definitely satire, though, that much I can say with confidence. The film pokes fun at so many things it could be (and probably has been) the subject of many a PhD dissertation.
I honestly can't write a review of it, at least not without spending way too much time I don't have right now reading about it.
All I can say is it is truly odd, and compelling and engaging and I loved it. I really loved it.
My frustration with Buñuel's films is inherent with my frustration at a certain subset of film, that of the variety which prominently features vapid rich white bourgeois doing vapid rich white bourgeois nonsense. Not my thing, and unfortunately seems to be a mainstay among many directors' bodies of work.
So The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a film I kind of despise on many levels if nothing else than because it's literally lampooning the very thing I hate, the satire good but still forcing me to endure what it's satirizing. Essentially a group of friends go from place to place expecting to eat dinner at each location only for circumstances to subvert their meal. Such inconveniences reveal to the…
At some point in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (any sense of time, whether diegetic or otherwise, quickly becomes meaningless as scene after scene ends with a character waking up and reflecting, "What a strange dream I've just had…"), the main characters go to a dinner party at a colonel's house where they're served fake plastic chicken, and then a large curtain is pulled back to reveal a theater audience. The dinner guests bashfully mumble something about having forgotten their lines and hastily scurry off stage.
This is Buñuel's metaphor for the aristocracy, the titular discreet charm of the bourgeoisie—so discreet, in fact, that you might not be able to see it at all. Class…
Supporting an abundance of symbolism with its visual aspects, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is an extraordinarily humorous film. The narrative pertains to a company of upper-middle-class people endeavouring to eat together but are persistently interrupted by a variety of incidents and events. Directed by Luis Buñuel and written in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière, there is an assortment of themes compressed into the narrative which belies its prompt one hundred and one-minute runtime.
Dreams perform an essential role within the film, as they often do with movies from the surrealist filmmaker, and it's overcrowded with mysteries and contradictions. Hence, it's all somewhat subjective whether the series of vignettes blend into a harmonious declaration of a class of people fixed on a road to nowhere, as an ambiguous reoccurring sequence implies. The film can lay claim to being more significant as the years advance as the bourgeoisie appear to be developing even more selfish and greedy tendencies.
Criterion Collection Spine #102
(Foreign language film)
I just awoke from this strange dream where I was watching a movie about all these frivolous European elite characters, and the wacky things that happen when they come together for meals.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was my first stop in my journey to discover an appreciation for acclaimed surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
The movie reminded me of Monty Python, but much more random and subtle with the humour. I think the funniest moment for me had to be when a bunch of people at the Colonel's party were saying bad things about Don Rafael Acosta's country Miranda.
Every time you think the movie is going somewhere, it ends up just…
Half the doors in this movie don’t have knobs, and the paintings droop off walls at diagonals. A film that rewards pausing on every frame to explore its absurdities. Buñuel left me wondering whether the film is actually surreal or if the life, mannerisms, and traditions of the bourgeoisie made no sense to begin with.
Full of razor-sharp quips that will make you check your ears, like when the priest says, “I sold my car for the benefit of the poor.”
Still wonderful. Nested narratives are the anise flavor of my movie watching. The thing I hated as a kid and now seek out over and over again. Show me a another fuckin dream baby
The first half was stronger for me than the second half. Just a complete weirdo showcase, though. Lots of fun.
Hard to overstate how crazy this movie (ostensibly about six friends trying to eat) is. Absolute total commitment to basically one joke that just sustains and heightens over the course of 100 minutes. Love a movie when you never know if what you’re seeing is real.
I truly love this film start to finish, but the last 20 minutes of it are some of my favorite moments in cinema all together.
“Did you have a happy childhood?”
“Yes, I’ve only pleasant memories.”
“Not me. I have various complexes”
Florence explaining Rafael’s zodiac is also amazing
SO. FUCKEN. RICH.
Florence’s drunk 70’s provincial France energy is WHAT I NEED
The Bourgeoisie, always living between greed and fear, strives for more prestige and at the same time scorns the people below them. They pride themselves in their cultured conversation and refined tastes, but when their desires are not met, the nightmares come along with the frustration. At the end, under their façade, they are just beasts in tuxedo.
My favorite film from my second favorite director.
Why do I like this movie so much? I’m not quite sure to be honest. But like the title says it has a discreet charm in all its absurdity. There is something so nice and easy about people trying and failing to eat dinner over and over again.
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