Rickting The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois is an abstract and gleefully cynical attack on the upper classes. A group of middle-class people trying to have dinner keep getting interrupted in bizarre ways. There isn't much of a plot here and it often makes little sense. Essentially, it's just a collection of symbols and metaphors, but done in the best possible way with humour, brilliant style and enormous intelligence. It's an insane, wildly entertaining and endlessly smart oddball of a movie, with a fine script and Luis Bunuel's superb direction allowing the film to get better and better as it goes from one beautifully bizarre scene to another. It's a film which you'd never see now, and as an expression of art and innovation, it's a true delight to watch. This is enormously recommended for fans of Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch as well as fans of the avant-garde in general. It's a really fascinating film and critiques of society don't get much cooler than this. Highly recommended and well-worth seeing. Just don't expect a plot, a hint of logic or sense or a single dull moment. 9/10

FilmCriticLalitRao One does not know to what extent is the French film 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' influenced by famous psychologist Sigmund Freud and his groundbreaking book "The Interpretation of Dreams". This film presents some absolutely weird dreams disguised as real events. They throw light on different protagonists and their miserable lives. It is due to this innovation that director Luis Buñuel is able to create a very thin line between dreams and reality. Bourgeois hypocrisy in France is also depicted in order to reveal weaknesses which can be found in any country or any civilization. Some elements of this film would get repeated in later films directed by Buñuel. One can cite the issue of terrorism as the best example which is shown in "Cet Obscur Objet Du Désir". From a screenwriter's perspective, 'The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie' is an easy work for creative people. They would just have to create some unlimited situations for limited characters. This would enable everybody to watch this film without any preconceived notions.

billcr12 Another entry from Luis Bunuel, Discreet Charm is an overlapping story of a group of rich people trying to get together for dinner. The first attempt is made at a house where the owners explain that the party was scheduled for the next night, and so they travel to a restaurant, and are told by the staff that the manager has died, and they are waiting for the coroner, while they hold a vigil over the corpse; not to worry it gets stranger, as two days later one of the couples takes off to have sex in a garden. Next up, some of the women check out a tea house which has run out of all beverages, except for water. A bishop shows up wearing gardeners clothes and is thrown out. When he returns in his vestments, they kiss his ass, revealing their hypocrisy. The good man of the cloth tells his flock that his parents were poisoned, and the murderer never caught. He later visits a dying man, administering the Last Rites. Before shuffling off this mortal coil, the near dead guy reveals a terrible secret to the bishop, which leads to a shocking conclusion, unlike anything you have ever seen. Bunuel was a visionary filmmaker.

conedust La Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie is a celebrated film by a well-regarded surrealist auteur. Given that, and given my taste for such things, I went in with high hopes. But I rarely found it more than mildly amusing.It's undeniably clever. Bunuel's dry humor sparkles, and his gentle social critique hits its marks more often than not. The penultimate shot of Fernando Rey with a slice of ham stuffed in his mouth is one of the funniest and most memorable cinematic images I've encountered in quite a while. And Delphine Seyrig breezes through her scenes with hilariously blithe detachment. But the parts don't quite add up to a greater whole.The film reaches its peak about halfway through, once a pattern has been established (dinner parties will be attended, but dining will be teasingly withheld) and the central narrative has begun to digress and fragment. As the surreal intrudes upon the quotidian, a delicious sort of suspense sets in. Pity, then, that the last forty-five minutes squander this tension, retreating to tepid farce and a rather obvious critique of upper-crust social mores.Someone on the film's board once quoted the director as saying, "the bourgeois moral is the immoral thing for me, that which should be combated; the moral founded in our unjust social institutions as the religion, the homeland, the family, the culture, in short, the so-called pillars of the society." Thematically, the film consists of variations on this familiar counter-cultural conceit, and such thinking was certainly voguish in the late 60s and early 70s. It's an interesting and potentially valid argument, but I found the film's handling of the idea superficial, even clichéd.The same could be said, I suppose, of El Topo or Sweet Movie, but those films transcend glib adherence to fashionable ideologies and period style. I don't think La Charme Discret does that. Of course, it's more an urbane, low-key comedy of manners than a flaming art-bomb thrown through the window of middlebrow complacency, so perhaps the comparison is unfair. As a comedy, it is appealing, in a mild sort of way.Finally, I was disappointed by the film's look. I understand that the bland stage-set dining rooms are a device, and a successful one. But surreal detours aside, there isn't much to look at. The camera placements and movements are almost ploddingly ordinary, and while they capture the events adequately, they don't do anything interesting with them.I'm being unkind, of course, and terribly unfair. By stressing these complaints, I'm giving short shrift the wonderful performances and amusingly understated comic dialog. I'm overlooking the fabulously eerie dream sequences and Bunuel's masterful control of tone. I gave La Charme Discret a 7/10 because it IS charming, funny and somewhat intellectually intriguing. But I still came out of the experience feeling a bit let down...