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Director: Luis Buñuel
Screenplay: Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude
Carrière
Cast: Fernando Rey as Rafael
Acosta, Paul Frankeur as Francois Thévenot, Delphine Seyrig as Simone Thévenot,
Bulle Ogier as Florence, Stéphane Audran as Alice Sénéchal, Jean-Pierre Cassel
as Henri Sénéchal, Michel Piccoli as the Minister
In university, when I was
tentatively discovering world and art cinema through the DVD shelves of their
library, large enough to be its own building in a multi floor (?) book depository,
it was Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard I once felt were
completely overrated yet kept binging their films from the collection trying to
rationalise why they were even popular. Over ten years later, I hold them in
high regard.
It was a transitional period over
these ten years where, without wanting to dismiss anyone's taste in film in
these comments, I changed from the reader of Total Film magazine who once viewed The Usual Suspects (1995) and Memento
(2000) as the best of cinema to becoming the person who read Sight & Sound who viewed the likes
of Satantango (1994) to cult anime
as some of my favourites. (Nowadays I read neither and am a fan of many films). This is surprisingly a transition many cineastes
have been said to go through, as much due to growing in age; I openly admit a
form of Stockholm syndrome kicked in particularly with Godard too. One wishes I had this open-mindedness, slowly
cultivated from getting used to unconventional and experience film styles, back
in university when I had access to that library but hey hum.
Buñuel, particularly his final
famous French period where his films were co-scripted with Jean-Claude Carrière,
are also a lot more difficult for their apparent accessibility then you'd
think; Jean-Luc Godard's work was
always difficult on the surface before he even discarded narrative filmmaking
by the 2000s, but Buñuel's more elusive. His films, despite being satires in
the period from The Milky Way (1969),
aren't exactly funny ha ha but an aloof lifts of the eyebrows which doesn't
exactly come off as tight slappers. His films are paced slowly with minimal
camera movement and editing. He also doesn't have a lot of non-diegetic music
if none at all in The Discreet Charm...;
in any film, if there's no score to subliminally affect a viewer, it
drastically changes the pace considerably.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is nonetheless one of his
most accessible films. It can be summed up in one sentence, a group of middle
class bourgeoisie in vignettes who are constantly prevented from having a
dinner party, arguably alongside its quality how it's become one of his most
well known films, with a reputation even outside his filmography just from
winning the 1973 Best Foreign Picture Oscar, but it's still a bizarre and
subversive film, full of subplots to tangents and dreams within dreams which
get increasingly perplexing.
Our bourgeoisie are as appalling group
over-privileged figures as you could get; complimenting ex-Nazis as gentlemen,
adultery with each other's wives, and in the case of Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), an ambassador to a South
American country as corrupt as you could get despite his constant offense to
this being pointed out to him. Yet they are strangely sympathetic, mainly
because a) a cast including as legendary a cast of European actors like Rey to Delphine Seyrig is inherently full of the most charismatic of
Euro-cinema, and b) because they are utterly banal people, the real satire in
the current day, and more profound critique to have with the middle and high
classes, is that no matter how corrupt they could be, this particular lot are
as average and easily ruffled over a lack of tea in a cafe as you could get.
From there, they are figures who look like deer caught in the headlights a
great deal of the time, more concerned with sex and food whilst continually
putting up with increasingly pronounced interruptions, beginning with visiting
each other on the wrong day for a dinner part to a military troop in manoeuvres
paying a visit. Their worst attitudes are witnessed, but so is how baring their
privilege how mediocre they are too, profusely clueless as scenes have them
wandering countryside road as a curious form of purgatory.
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For a while the only truly sympathetic character, until a late period subplot twist, is Julien Bertheau's Monsignor Dufour, a priest who wishes at first to also garden. Much has been made of Buñuel's history of atheism, but alongside casting Édith Scob as the Virgin Mary in The Milky Way, there's a sweetness in a priest who wants to be someone else's paid gardener on the side even if their new employees are arseholes. It's only when that plot twist appears things are complicated; a loaded situation, literally, and a reminder Buñuel's jabs have a lot to do when religion had "organised" in front of the word. Noticeably how characters refuse to pay the priest any attention until he's actually in official uniform, rather than gardening dungarees, says a lot.
The moment The Discreet Charm... gets abstract is when scenarios not only get odder,
but when the dreams appear. Scenes literally stop to let one character talk
about their dreams, or in one case a solder at a cafe walks up to the female
protagonists and sits at their table, talking about his childhood and how the
ghost of his dead mother told him to kill his step father, all before saying
goodbye and never being seen again.
Then entire scenes are dreams dreamt
by the characters which are then dreams dreamt by their friends, and The Discreet Charm... truly gets weird.
And these become overtly surreal. Some are worse case scenarios, such as Rafael
Acosta shooting a dinner party host over saying his country is corrupt, but
others follow the tropes of barriers in their desires, fake plastic chickens,
and literal phantoms who roam the corridors. Their existence, baring farces
with bitter humour, still expose the worst in these people, from the corruption
of the police using electrified pianos to a general buffoonery of these strict
middle class ideals. Buñuel even has a bit of Godard's tricks at hand as, in a comically brief cameo by Michael Piccoli, his phone call to a
character (shot entirely separate from everyone else) is drowned out by the
sound of a plane twice, both to use the viewer but even the character trying to
communicate to him.
Any further attempt to analysis Buñuel
and Carrière's work would spoil it. The Discreet Charm... may be cool and
aloof at times in its presentation, but it's still funny, arguably the most
overtly humorous of his work despite his tendency to be more funny peculiar in
his career. The natural but brightly coloured world of French cinema is a good
place for this perverse comedy of manners and a cast this strong to work
within; obvious Rey stands out as the
ambassador who'll sacrifice himself for a cold cut, and has to deal with a
rebel group in his country constantly trying to send a female agent to him, but
everyone succeeds in making these stereotypes have some personality. They all
(even unintentionally) bring some sympathy to this miserable lot as, despicable
as they are, they are shown as guided by ordinary obsessions like you and I,
the awkward moment a husband and wife want to have sex but the guests have
already arrived, or the moment you realise the proprietor's corpse for a restaurant
is in another room as you are about to dine.
Even the most absurd moments are
brilliantly staged by how calm or matter-of-fact they are, the military group
coming for a large banquet, or the harsh efficiency of a group of machine gun
welding intruders. If anything, it proved that Luis Buñuel, who has multiple phases of his career, had a virtue of
always being this sedate and calm in tone whether here or in his earlier
Mexican productions, his slow manner particularly for these final French films
adding to the dark humour and allowing it to stand out proudly.
Abstract Spectrum: Humorous/Surreal/Whimsical
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
Personal Opinion:
Returning to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, it's a gem, an absolutely
incredible work. A lot can be delved in further if you wish to dissect each
segment, but it cannot be argued that the film's singular acclaim comes as much
from how more accessible in structure yet so open to interpretation as it is.
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