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Rating:  - Odd, But Pretty Good
Winner of the 1972 Oscar for Best Foreign Film "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is a strange little film that is really quite enjoyable. The setup is incredibly simple; Rafael Acosta, the ambassador of Maranda shows up to the house Senechal house for dinner, along with Francois Thevenot, his wife Simone Thevenot, and her sister Florence. Henri Senechal is not there, but his wife Alice is and she informs them that they were not to meet until the following night. They dispute this claim, but quickly see what they can do.
So begins these characters constantly trying to sit down and enjoy a meal together. This will take them to a restaurant, where the owner has recently died (and is in the room with them); Will bring the Senechal's gardener to murder, and a whole bunch of other wackiness. A lot of the stuff is imagined, some of the events occur in dreams that lead you to believe it's real until something unbelievable happens and a character wakes up. There's also a funny "sub-plot" involving Rafael believing that a terrorist is attempting to kill him (the terrorist is a woman, he belives in involved with a group of men, who stands in front of his building attempting to sell small mechanical dogs). The movie is funny and seems almost like a play sometimes. It's an absurd film, but it's not just the story that won it Best Foreign Film. An equal amount of kudos go to cinematographer Edmond Richard, the cinematography is really great. And of course, screenwriter/legendary director Luis Bunel ('Belle De Jour' & 'The Exterminating Angel') who's direction fits the film so much and is truly flawless. Since it's got a word in the title that most people won't be able to pronounce ('bourgeoisie') and it's in French, a lot of people won't see this movie. Hopefully, since it's in The Criterion Collection more people will take notice. It's not a perfect film, but it's definitely one worth checking out.
GRADE: B+
Rating: - Bunuel social commentary
Spanish surrealist director Luis Bunuel once again is critical of various aspects of society in his 1972 Oscar winner "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
Bunuel focuses on a group of six individuals, who are members of the upper crust of society. Fernando Rey, the most recognizable actor portrays the cocaine smuggling Don Rafael, a diplomat from the fictitious Latin American country of Miranda. Throughout the film they attempt to share a meal but a series of bizarre interruptions prevent them from consumating the repast. While many attempts are made to share dinner the net reult is a failure. Try as they might the efforts of these bourgeoisie accomplish exactly nothing.
The plot is admixed with a series of dream sequences involving several characters that result in surreal happenstances.
Bunuel pokes fun at both the military and the clergy. He represents soldiers, who are on manuevers are pot smoking automatons. He lambastes the clergy when he depicts a priest after giving a dying man last rites, ironically kills him with a shotgun blast. The man apparently years ago had killed the priest's parents, a crime for which he had just been absolved after confessing.
We get the idea that Bunuel is not exactly enamored with the society is which he lives.
Rating: - bunuel's best
A satire on social mores, the film begins as guests arrive for a dinner party, only to find they have come on the wrong day. They agree to meet at a later date, but each subsequent encounter, real or imagined, ends in frustration and/or calamity. At one of these, a soldier invites himself to the table, introducing the first of Bunuel's patented dream sequences - a straightforward narrative of a mother's love and the eternal bond that exists between the dead and the living. By contrast, the dreams of the bourgeoisie reveal their petty egos, guilt and anxiety. The line between fantasy and reality becomes sufficiently blurred so that by the time we reach the final scene, with all six protagonists trudging down a seemingly endless road, one is forced to concede the entire film may be the product of their collective (discreet?) imagination.
The Criterion edition is technically far in advance of any previous video release, enabling a new appreciation for the film's superb photography, enhancing its varied palette, and rendering a seductive gloss to each meticulously composed frame.
Rating:  - Bunuel doing what he does best
Luis Bunuel was an old hand by this time at making surrealistic, dream-dominated comedies, and he throws this one off with seeming ease. His targets are the usual ones: the rich, the church, the military, and diplomacy, but he is more playful here and mellow rather than savage in his satire. A group of rich people (one of the men is an ambassador of a fictitious South American country and all the men are involved with drug smuggling) is trying to sit down to a meal together (at various times), but they keep getting interrupted - by terrorists, the army, the police, even by a corpse. It's weird and crazy, but it works. As to be expected, the dream sequences are the best and funniest things in the movie. It won the Acadamy Award for best foreign picture and deservedly so.
Rating: - Amaze the bourgeois!
If he were alive, Luis Buñuel would have been amused to find out that one of Moscow's popular cafes was named after this film. It is not surprising because the Russians enjoy abstract, modernistic ideas (Marxism was one), or at least used to. The oddball cinema is a conduit to transmit these ideas into unsuspecting minds. Amaze the bourgeois; overturn conventionality for effect was Luis Buñuel's goal. But the director was talented enough to go beyond that. The movie is a hypnotic tale of strange situations (quite without a plot) where characters exist in a dream-like state - all with compulsive urges to entertain themselves. The blatant self-indulgence is the only action. This mode of society, Buñuel hints, doesn't offer a chance of salvation, or as the Buddhist would say, no escape from the circle of Samsara. To me, the movie has a hint of a critique of our western way, as if it coming from someone who is not grounded in the Christian paradigm, or coming from the East. Buñuel had in fact rejected official Christianity and made a mockery of it. He was a Spaniard who was shocked and disgusted by ultra-conservative Catholic prelates cozying up with Spanish fascists in the 1930s, even though his friend Salvador Dali had played with the fascist ideas. Buñuel anti-fascism (and anti-imperialism) is perhaps the explanation why the Russians honor him (and so do the Mexicans). The thing to understand about Luis Buñuel is that he, behind the surrealist façade, was a prankster and a joker. His film-making was a series of practical jokes - he liked to be messing up with the minds of his viewers. To be vaccinated with a shot of Buñuel's counterculture in the age of the Disney cinema is probably not the worst thing. Also, the extra documentary DVD is quite good.
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