Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie (1972)
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Duration: 102 minuten
Alternative titles: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie / De Verholen Charme van de Kleinburgerlijkheid
Country:
France / Italy / Spain
Directed by: Luis Buñuel
Stars: Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeur and Delphine Seyrig
IMDb score:
7,7 (50.302)
Releasedate: 15 September 1972
Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie plot
"Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language film 1973"
A complex, ever-changing web of dreams, within dreams, with no real plot, centered around a group of six highly respected and highly placed individuals in society and their constant attempts to have dinner together. The heckling around that dinner party becomes more and more surreal as the film progresses.
Actors and actresses
Don Rafael
Mme Thevenot
M. Thevenot
Florence
Alice Sénéchal
M. Sénéchal
Monseigneur Dufour
Le Colonel
Le Ministre
Delecluze
Reviews & comments
renske
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- 1105 messages
- 926 votes
Finally watched this movie but I don't really get it. While I had read different things about it, read and seen interviews with Carriere.. it all seemed terribly interesting to me. Interesting, well, that's actually the word. But I miss, very old-fashioned, a plot. Something really connecting. I want to be moved. All those loose stories with all those finds on how a dinner party can be interrupted, it must be. Perhaps I am missing a background in the obviously very solid French etiquette. I do see people doing strange things and reacting strangely to each other, but that's about it.
Especially in the second half, death often seems to be around the corner and various situations are suddenly dreamed up by one of the six characters. What did that mean? I couldn't really warm up to watching this movie all over again.
I found a lot of ideas and things very funny. I really liked the game of the older blonde woman and also of the king. I thought the 52 year old waitress was funny. The priest as gardener. The ambassador who grabs some ham after the other five have been mowed down and is therefore mowed down himself.
Another example. The couple in the beginning let the other four wait because they want to have sex for a while and then are somewhat offended that the others have left.I do understand that it is about the hypocrisy of being quite anti-social and then be surprised at the behavior of the others, and there are dozens more examples, but I thought it was so obligatory. Yes of course that is hypocritical. Or the ambassador's drug dealing and at the same time saying about others that they are 'terrorists'. Very recognizable in this day and age and probably an observation of all times, but no more than that.
Maybe I should stop watching French 70s movies because I seem to down vote everything.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Donkerwoud
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- 8696 messages
- 3960 votes
Powerful men, their spouses who blasély watch the world's suffering and a priest who likes to exchange the higher for weeding and pruning as a gardener. 'Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie' (1972) is a surrealistic drooling where the privileged upper class is trapped in each other's nightmare only to be exposed at any moment in their appalling hypocrisy. Whether it is the ambassador of a South American dictatorship who laughs off human rights violations and corruption scandals, while sweating carrots for the guerrilla group that is out for his life. Or the French consul and his wife who prefer to finish their wildly erotic courtship, while the other guests are already at the door for their planned dinner. Or the priest/gardener for whom the holy sacraments are something to routinely take, but do not get in the way of his earthly vengefulness.
But the most beautiful are the seemingly random moments when 'ordinary soldiers' share their inner fears with this privileged club. Not directly in line with the farcical main line, but as a theatrical side where ghostly apparitions and patricides torment their shaky minds. Not that this upper class is otherwise very interested, or especially as a cheerful aside at the table while in the background all the sounds of war can be heard of human lives being wasted at the same time. With the surrealism in 'Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie' (1972), Luis Buñuel manages to depict the human absurdity of a political elite that invents its own rules to keep aloof from the consequences of what they actually do to each other. Although in a way they are victims of themselves, because deep down they fear the dismantling of their own nothingness.
Translated from Dutch · View original
wihu61
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- 1011 messages
- 540 votes
The second dream scene, against the backdrop of that empty city: you meet old acquaintances, your mother, a little later you are looking for them, but they are gone, untraceable, as in a dream. Horrifying really...
An elusive and fascinating film, incomparable to anything. Don't know how many times I've seen him. And then also Stéphane Audran... 4 stars are always guaranteed with me.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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