French-Italian-Spanish co-production under the helm of director Luis Buñuel concerning an odd-duck group of upper-class friends and acquaintances in Paris who meet often for meals and conversation, only to rarely savor their cuisine due to a peculiar series of interruptions. Buñuel, who also co-authored the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière, at times gently skewers the hungry wealthy; his characters are not decadent nor lazy, perhaps just comically fettered; the filmmaker doesn't score points against their lives as much as he prods the folly of their ways. The lapses of reality into a satirical daisy-chain of dreams is surprising at first but finally monotonous, especially as Buñuel becomes less sly here and more mean-spirited (I could have done without the police interrogation and the piano torture). Still, there are some marvelous visual touches (such as the dinner table on-stage) accompanied by a subtle yet vivid use of color, and the cast is uniformly excellent. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film. **1/2 from ****

"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", a leisurely paced, incisive satire on social mores and class hypocrisy, opens with a group of friends arriving on the wrong day of a dinner engagement. this is only the begining of a succession of unexpected and unusual events to follow. The dinner party is the movie's main setting and it is there that reality and illusion often times blend imperceptibly together. The film is structured as a series of surreal sequences, which prompted esteemed film critic Pauline Kael to opine 'His(Director Louis Bunuel) indifference to dramatic logic is complete.' And how. Bunuel's narrative plays an elaborate game with the viewer through it's subconscious imagery and audacious use of time. His tendency to experiment with technique and form often times led to discovery and innovation. The cinema of Louis Bunuel invariably deals with the discrepancy between appearance and reality; decorum and desire. His world view was subversive and anarchistic. He was a cheerful pessimist, skeptical but not susceptible to Bergmanian despair. His skepticism extended to all of those he found playing too neat a social game. The filmmaker's career was one sustained assault on authoritarianism. Witness an indiscreet character in the film who claims: 'No one system can help the masses acquire refinement.' He believed man was, unconsciously, a slave to custom and aimed to shock viewers out of their unthinking acceptance of established values. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"(An Academy Award winner in 1972 for Best Foreign Film) is a boldly inventive picture. Dozens of frames are filled with clever filmic devices: environmental noises increase inordinately during routine conversations; an ambiguous procession is inserted freely within the text. These cinematic ploys add intrigue to the already peculiar goings-on. The walk by the main group of characters along a country roadside is mysterious and compelling. The players are noticeably silent and contemplative. Is this an anxious dream? The afterlife? An insignificant flashback? Whichever, the recurring sequence underscores the obliqueness and cool obscurity of the film. One might not identify closely with the disenchanted Bunuelian sensibility or the unsentimental stance he takes, however one knows immediately and unmistakably that they are in the gifted hands of a film technician like a Godard or Kurosawa. A director in complete control of his medium. A highly personal filmmaker frequently referred as 'a poet of hallucination who follows the caprices of his fantastical imagination.' Someone whose fanciful paths of creation were invariably led by the irrational. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", with it's arresting mixture of calculation and carelessness, remains a unique and influential movie. The acerbic films of Robert Altman and the perverse mischievousness of the Coen brothers films, to mention but a few, pay a large debt to the strange universe and unconventional perspective of Louis Bunuel. Film lovers uninitiated in surrealist cinema will find "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" an alluring and beguiling crash course.

This is an odd little film about some people who never do get to sit down to the meal they plan on having. A lot of weird and unexpected stuff intervenes--during which you learn a little more about the characters (particularly how unlikeable some of them are). The problem I had with the movie is this--it just wasn't very interesting and I repeatedly felt like turning it off because I found it more boring than compelling. Now this is not because of the surreal nature of the film--I have a relatively high tolerance for the strange and unconventional (just look at my glowing review for the VERY surreal Happiness of Katakuris). It's just that strange as it was, it just wasn't too interesting nor was it weird enough to make that great an impression. I know it puts me in a very small minority, but most of the Luis Buñuel films I have seen were not that compelling--odd yes, but not particularly interesting. About the only one I really liked was the sad film "Tristan".

UPDATE: I've seen most of the director's films since I wrote this review. I did find several (other than "Tristan") that I really did like. However, I still think he had about as many hits as misses and feel he was a bit overrated. But, films like "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Young One" are indeed exceptional films.