vendredi 7 février 2025

the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

 le charme discret de la bourgeoisie by luis bunuel | film Review



Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie by Luis Bunuel
Released in 1972
Actors: Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Stéphane Audran, Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Genre: Comedy, Surrealist


The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), directed by Luis Buñuel, is a surrealist satire about a group of upper-class friends who repeatedly try—and fail—to have a meal together.  

Their attempts are constantly interrupted by bizarre and unexpected events, blurring the lines between reality and dream.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.

Through its absurd and dreamlike structure, the film critiques the hypocrisy, emptiness, and self-importance of the bourgeoisie, using humor and surreal imagery to expose their privilege and detachment from the real world.

For a long time, I thought I hated surrealists because I didn't like Dali. But then one day I watched Bunuel's Belle de Jour and understood how much I actually loved surrealism. Le charme discret de la bouregoisie is one more example of how much I love Bunuel's late work: the alternation between dream and reality (or is there really a difference between the two), this form of hypnosis he puts you under so that you feel compelled to watch the film and don't know what to do after it - and most of all the way he uses sudden noise to cut out conversations (gosh I love that).

Bunuel was looking for a subject on the theme of repetitions. He took something his productor Serge Sliberman had said at one moment and decided to make the opening of the film on it. The idea of the bourgeoisie only came very late in the process of the scenario-making. They mostly filmed the film in Paris or les Yvelines. The film received the Oscar of the best foreign film in 1973, le Prix Méliès in 1972; and Bunuel said of the film: "je fus particulièrement satisfait de pouvoir donner dans ce film ma recette du dry martini" (Luis Bunuel, Mon dernier soupir, 1982, 306).

I have been obsessed with the scene that happens in what I would call the underworld, but which is probably more the limbo world. The scene were they end up on stage, with someone saying the lines, and everyone runs off stage was also incredible.

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