The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)--Bunuel Review #4

A year later, when the film had been nominated for an Oscar, four Mexican reporters tracked us down at El Paular, where we were already at work on another project. During lunch, they asked if I thought I was going to win that Oscar.

"Of course," I replied between bites, "I've already paid the twenty-five thousand dollars they wanted. Americans may have their weakness but they do keep their promises."

--Luis Bunuel, from his autobiography, My Last Sigh

5/5--The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Criterion Collection)

Bunuel considered this film (which did indeed win the Best Foreign Film Oscar in '72) the second part in a triptych of films dealing with similar themes, especially, as Bunuel puts it, "the search for truth, as well as the necessity of abandoning it as soon as you've found it." In this case, although the film is quite comedic, this truth is rather harsh: the bourgeois characters are silly, self-involved and superficial, though they do have intermittently attractive qualities.

I can't speak on the first film of the trilogy, The Milky Way, which I haven't seen, but which apparently deals with religious themes as well as the satire of bourgeois culture found in the other two films. The final film, which was Bunuel's second to last, is The Phantom of Liberty, which is quite good and marks a return to the free-associational filmmaking style of Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or.

Compared to Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is more heavily rooted in the dream world and contains many wonderful dream sequences and dream-like occurences, such as cockroaches crawling out of a piano which has been converted into an electric torture device and a beautiful revolutionary showing up at the house of the ambassador from a made-up South American country (played with a lot of spunk by frequent Bunuel collaborator, Fernando Rey) with a bag filled with lettuce, a handgun and "the key to dreams."

The basic plot of Discreet Charm, which is superficially similar to Bunuel's late Mexican film The Exterminating Angel, follows a group of wealthy upper class friends who are constantly thwarted in their attempts to have dinner with one another (though they always seem to find time to sleep around.) The guests arrive late or on the wrong day, get arrested, end up at restaurants that are either out of food or having a wake, get barged in on by a military squadron that is preparing for maneuvers, and eventually get gunned down by terrorists, although by this point the film is entirely taking place in the realm of dreams.

The film is essentially a surrealist black comedy, and satirizes the upper crust's obsession with food and drink, as well as the ridiculous niceties of etiquette, and (did I mention?) it is full of uproarious moments, such as when one of the dinner guests at a General's house tries on the General's Napoleon memento, and Rey remarks that it is a "ghastly" and "slightly effeminate hat."

A few more things: there is a recurring character who plays various young military men and recounts some startlingly frightening dreams, such as one where he meets dead friends and relatives on an empty street, which is obviously a cardboard set.

Another dream, involves an elaborate table setting with fine food that suddenly, reflexively, turns into a stage with a jeering audience and a man in a box whispering lines to the guests, who are shocked speechless.

All in all, this film feels like a revue for the 29 films that preceded it, a real-career capping achievement, which can either be a good place to spark a new obsession with Bunuel or go to see the old master again at the peak of his game. By the end of the film, the viewer is unsure what in the film was dream or reality, but Bunuel uses the dreams quite aptly to humanize the victims of his otherwise viscous comic satire, and we come out of the film feeling like we know them all quite intimately and even (gasp!) like them a little bit.