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…
中产阶级的审慎魅力, 中产阶级的诱惑, 中产阶级拘谨的魅力, 资产阶级的魅力, 부르주아의 은밀한 매력, El discreto encanto de la burguesía, Burjuvazinin Gizli Çekiciliği, Borgerskapets diskré sjarm, Der diskrete Charme der Bourgeoisie, Il fascino discreto della borghesia, 资产阶级的审慎魅力, Скромное обаяние буржуазии, Burjuvazinin Gizemli Çekiciliği, O Charme Discreto da Burguesia, A burzsoázia diszkrét bája, O Discreto Charme da Burguesia, Дискретният чар на буржоазията, Η Διακριτική Γοητεία της Μπουρζουαζίας, Farmecul discret al burgheziei, Borgarklassens diskreta charm, Dyskretny urok burżuazji, סוד הקסם הבורגני, Сором'язлива чарівність буржуазії, Nenápadný půvab buržoazie, 中產階級拘謹的魅力, ブルジョワジーの秘かな愉しみ, El discret encant de la burgesia, Porvariston hillitty charmi
buñuel could have said "eat the rich" but instead he said "the rich don't eat" because he's a cryptic bitch
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…
I too hate it when I'm trying to have dinner with my rich buddies and suddenly *shuffles deck, pulls card* the army burst in.
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?
Kept waiting for that lady to have her eye sliced open but I guess that's a different movie
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…
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.
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.
It's a series of largely plotless vignettes about five content upper class French drug dealers (and one crooked South American diplomat) trying to have dinner together while constantly being interrupted by complications of escalating weirdness. It's genuinely funny, the satire of upper class mores cutting. The characters don't really stand out as individuals, but that's the point: their monumental complacency has melted their personalities into oblivion. The only way they can continue to live comfortably while surrounded by such madness and cruelty is to keep their concerns and conversations as banal as possible. You can't live that way for long without it sandblasting the features right off of your personality. Bunuel directs with a mixture of elegant tracking shots and…
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…