The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Monsieur Senechal and his wife Alice enjoy the company of their affluent inner circle: Don Rafael, ambassador of a fictional Latin America country, Monsieur Thevenot and his wife, the latter who is having assignations with Rafael, and Mademe Thevenot's alcoholic sister. They sometimes gather at the Senechal's for assorted dinners and lunches, but there are fractures in the pristine landscape. Frequently, the Senechal's guests confuse the day on which they are expected. When they do arrive on the correct day, they are constantly interrupted. Nary a bite is savored before army batallions or, on another "ordinary" evening, the police bust in. 

Welcome to the universe of writer/director Luis Buñuel. However, the unwelcome guests may have some understandable motives. The males in the dinner group are dealing in drugs. Rafael being the head dope, and always worried that he is the target of a kidnapping or assassination attempt. He lives in constant fear, crouching in his country's embassy suite, spying on that curious young hippie who arrives daily to sell wind-up toys on the square below. Nonetheless, he carries on his liasons with Madame Theveont, only to be interrupted by...Monsieur Thevenot, and those questionable types downstairs. And how about that priest who takes a job as the Senechal's gardener? He must be rather suspicious. 

But wait a minute. I'm merely recounting the plot. I'm dancing about architecture, as a wise soul once quipped. This is a Luis Buñuel film. Master surrealist. Creator of L'AGE DOR and LOS OLVIDADOS. No one else like him. What other filmmaker would dare create a scenario out of a group of dinner guests who refuse to leave the dining room, staying long enough to starve and die, as in THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL? In 1972's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, the dinner guests never do get to enjoy that meal, but rather walk and ride endlessly through town to attend another abortive attempt at that great social event, the great leveller. Food. We all have to eat, right? It brings us together. Well, sure, the peasants dine on stale bread while the Senechals dine on baluga caviar, but you get the idea. The partaking of a meal is an open communion, of sorts. Well, not in Buñuel's later THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY, where the openness of eating and the privacy of defecation are reversed, but pardon the tangent. 

When the party tries to have a meal at a restuarant, they are interrupted again, by mourners saying prayers over a corpse in the next room: the chef. Later, they are invited by a general (who, with his platoon, interrupted a previous meal) to his house for a feast. Once they arrive, they are horrified to find as a curtain pulls back that they are on a stage, in front of a theater audience. Worse yet, these bourgeoisie face a far more disturbing realization, they can't remember their lines! What is Luis Buñuel trying to say? Certainly he is skewering the importance of appearances. How else are we to react to the scene where the aforementioned priest first arrives at the Senechal's chateau, stating that he indeed is a priest looking for work as a gardener? And what then when we find he is ejected because he is in commoner's street garb, but then embraced when he returns in full priest regalia? Clothes maketh the man. There is so much more. 

DISCREET CHARM is a really a series of vignettes, barely strung together by the device of the principal charcaters' vain pursuits of any sort of food or drink, and the ability to experience a period of time where one of life's simplest pleasures can be treasured. When the ladies lunch at a cafe, they are informed by the waiter that the establishment is out of tea and even coffee. That's OK, because the ladies are then are interrupted by a soldier who relays grim childhood stories. The theme of interruption, not just of meals but also illicit meetings, sleep, and even life itself, is constant. Searching, over and over. For what? The idyll of some utopic faccade? Seems positively dystopian, even amongst the most lavish of backdrops. The interruptions keep coming, but when things really get weird, we find that we are a pawn in the old it-was-only-a-dream device.

Sometimes, we find that a character was dreaming that another character was dreaming. You think David Lynch might've been a Buñuel fan? How does the viewer connect the dots among all of the disparate elements? I'm not sure that is the point. I imagine you could really study this film, making theses out of all the political, social, and religious references. Some are obvious, many are cloaked. All are fascinating. DISCREET CHARM is like a moving piece of art. A work that somehow scampered away from its creator and slinked onto theater and television screens. And I bet he was more than happy about it. Subversive piece, this film. An absolute must for the filmgoer's education. I suspect it will continue to manifest itself like a fungus in my thoughts for eons to come. (part trois, cinematic gustatory trilogy)