Customer Reviews

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [VHS]

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is one of Spanish director Luis Bunuel's finest, most subtle surrealist comedies. At least his films are often classed as comedies -- they're more an assault on our senses and conventions. The 'plot' (if one can call it that) unwinds slowly -- the fulcrum being the absurd situation of a group of socialite friends who are attempting to ....... no, better see for yourself than have me disclose it. It's enough to say that if you enjoy the Marx Brothers, or Pedro Almodovar, you'll adore Luis Bunuel. He has the comedy of the former and the anarchy of the latter, but his dagger is always that little bit sharper and more deadly. The promised Criterion issue is on two discs for a running time of almost three hours; the usual cinema version is less than two hours, so there must be some great supplements coming our way. Let's hope for more Bunuel on DVD -- next up should be his classic silent film 'Un Chien Andalou', in the 'sonorised' version prepared in the 1950s, when Bunuel himself added a soundtrack of the music he always envisaged as part of the film, ranging from Argentinian tangoes to the 'Love-Death' from 'Tristan and Isolde'.

Director Luis Bunuel is often described as a surrealist, but the word misapplied in reference to his later works; rather than present the viewer with an odd visual display, he prefers to first create a plausible reality and then progressively undercut it with an increasingly implausible series of events. Such is the case with the Academy Award-winning THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, which begins with four friends who arrive at their hosts' home only to discover they have arrived on the wrong night--a plausible situation. But before the film has run its course, Bunuel unravels his tale of a meal that never quite happens in the most unexpected ways imaginable.

The film works on several levels, mocking social conventions, the church, and eventually spilling its action into a series of overlapping nightmares in which various attempts to dine are frustrated by everything from the corpse of a restaurant manager in a nearby room to military manouvers. On one memorable occasion, the friends are invited to dine and are seated around an elegant table--when a curtain suddenly rises behind them and reveals them to be seated on a stage before a hostile audience!

The cast (which features Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Paul Frankeur, Bulle Ogier, Stephane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel as the constantly frustrated diners) plays with considerable aplomb, performing the most irrational scenes with a magnificent realism. When combined with Bunuel's absurdist story, the result is a disquieting yet often very funny discourse on frustrated appetites both real and imagined, and with many layers of incidental meaning along the way.

The DVD package is very nice, with the film in near-pristine condition and a host of interesting and often amusing extras, and Bunuel fans will consider it more than worth the rather hefty price-tag attached. But a word of caution to the uninitiated: Bunuel is not for those who seek a tidy plot line with clear-cut meanings. If you are not already a fan, you should probably begin with his equally complex but somewhat more accessible and considerably more subtle BELLE DE JOUR before diving off into DISCREET CHARM.

--GFT (Amazon reviewer)--

I have about 15 Criterion DVDs, and this is probably the best: a wonderful surreal comedy given a fabulous transfer to DVD. When the excellent extras are included this is outstanding package.

The film will not be to everybody's taste: if you tend to favour no-brainer farces like 'Dumb & Dumber', I'd advise you to give this one a miss. However if you enjoy the films of Woody Allen, the Coen brothers and fine cinema generally you will enjoy this film, especially as the performances are wonderful: the urbane Fernando Rey, sexy Stephane Audran, and the bumbling Paul Frankeur are perfectly cast.

The anamorphic image is outstanding: vividly clear with beautiful colours, and no nicks or flecks at all. Just beam up the sequence where the guests arrive for lunch near the beginning of the film (about 20 or so minutes in) and marvel at the luscious greens of the foliage as the car comes up the drive.

Bunuel's direction is understated, but that is his genius in this film: in lesser hands this rambling tale with its bizarre dream sequences interpolated would have been a shambles, but the 'story' is so tautly told and perfectly paced.

The shorter documentary is not so interesting, but the 105 minutes one is fascinating.

A desert island DVD set.

Luis Bunuel, friend and contemporary of fellow Spaniard Salvador Dali, was the cinematic equivalent of his compatriot: an artist who chose surrealism as his vehicle of expression. Bunuel also had one heck of a funny bone -- alternately scathing and light-hearted, subtle and vulgar. There's nothing cooler than genius with a sense of humor.

How to describe Bunuel's terrifically imaginative "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"? Think Monty Python...in French. The film is like a matryoshka, one of those Russian toys that get smaller as you open each successive doll. Its story is told through a series of unfolding dreams that open one into the other with increasing amusement. Despite rare instances of gore and some potentially offensive material (Catholics may dislike the priest's role), "Charm" is consistently funny, often hilarious, and ALWAYS stimulating.

With this issue, Criterion has released one of their best products to date. The film itself appears slightly washed out (a common look for 70s movies), but it's clean about 90% of the time. Since there is little music and few sound effects, the audio quality scores as reasonable. Two nice documentaries are included, one better than the other. The subtitles caused few concerns; there were only a few, infrequent typos. This package is a must for lovers of foreign cinema, and a worthy addition to any DVD collection.

My willingness to explore has once again yielded happy results. "Charm" has quickly become one of my all-time favorites, right up there with the best Hollywood productions. Take the plunge and ignore any misgivings about "art films" with subtitles. If you fall prey to the herd mentality -- or your own timidity -- you'll miss out on one of the most humorous and interesting films in ANY language. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is a nearly fool-proof cure for the "foreignfilmophobic."

Different people will get different things from this odd film. I'll share with you what I take from it.

It is a series of events that at first seem real but usually become dreamlike, and sometimes end with one of the characters waking up and revealing the last scene to be a dream of his.

The most memorable scene, for me, is the scene where the major characters are invited to a dinner and, during the dinner, a curtain is raised and the diners are shown to be on a stage, observed by an audience.

This seems to me like a metaphor for our lives. It reminds me of the Shakespeare soliloquy comparing us to actors on a stage. What it says to me is that we are these actors, and there is an unseen audience for us.

To fill out that explanation, we see a bishop who wants to be a gardener. Depending on what he is wearing, he is taken for either a bishop or a gardener. Our identities are not stattic. We are playing parts. We are not what we seem to be. We aren't even what we think we are. We are souls together on a journey, like the six souls walking together along a road, shown to us a number of times throughout the film, and in the final shot.

The separation between life and death is stripped away in this film. Ghosts talk to living characters. Ghosts appear in several scenes, as alive as any of the other characters. Our lives are illusions. Our lives are dreams. Life is a dream. It is not real. Death is not death.

The living are simply the ones invited to dinner, those who are being viewed by an unseen audience. The dead haven't gone away. We are all, alive or dead, souls together on a journey.

Other than that, I can't really make sense of the film, in the sense of putting it all together to form a whole. It is a series of partially related stories. After about an hour of it, I found myself getting a little tired of what was going on. But then it picked up a bit and ended strong enough.

I like the scene of the bishop giving last rites to the man who murdered the bishop's parents, and giving the man forgiveness, and then blowing his head off with a gun.

I also like the scene of the couple having friends over for dinner, and then sneaking out a window to have sex in the garden for 20 minutes before receiving their guests.

Another scene I like is when a man and woman are about to commit adultery, when the woman's husband shows up at the door, the woman herself walks right up to him with a plausible excuse for being there, and the other man asks to have a few minutes alone with the other man's wife while the husband waits for her. Guess why.

These little scenes give you an idea of the flavor of the action of this film, and of its humor.

This film agrees with Shakespeare that we are actors in a play, but doesn't agree with Macbeth's negative judgment that life is a tale told by an idiot. The six characters walking together down that road aren't idiots. They aren't Einstein, but they aren't idiots. They are dreamers, as are we all.

Undoubtedly the DVD box presented by Criterion deserves 5 stars. Apart from the superb copy of THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, you will be able to watch a documentary produced by french and spanish television about Luis Bunuel's career with a lot of accurate interviews of the friends, the family and the actors who have surrounded the spanish genius. A second documentary will lead you into Bunuel's home before giving you the opportunity to discover some cocktails recipes invented by Bunuel.

In the late 20's, Luis Bunuel was an active member of the surrealist movement and gave to the cinema a unique masterpiece, UN CHIEN ANDALOU, whose screenplay had been written by Salvador Dali. For nearly 50 years, the cinematographic world of Luis Bunuel has been filled with the anarchic ideas of this movement and, if you don't know any of his movies, you are going to be a little bit puzzled by THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE. Before entering this world, you must learn to forget to ask " why ". Why are these people wandering through french landscapes ? Why does this bishop want so badly to become a gardener ? Why does this soldier have the urge to confess the dream he had the night before ? and so on. There are no particular meanings in these actions, they are just part of the world of one of the best film directors of the XXth century.

A healthy DVD.

The title is certainly intriguing, suggesting something ultra sophisticated, and we can guess that "discreet" will be exposed as "hypocritical," and the charm will be superficial. In this we are not disappointed. I should also say this reminds me of the theater of the absurd that had its heyday in the postwar period in Europe and the US with Rhinoceros, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Waiting For Godot, The Birthday Party, etc., and then more or less disappeared, Roberto Benigni's recent cinematic venture, La Vita e Bella (1997) notwithstanding. Most critics however would refer to this work as an example of surrealism, an aesthetic movement in art, theater, cinema, etc. that grew out of Dadaism in the twenties. But the theater of the absurd is later, taking its rationale from the existential work of Camus--see especially his collection of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)--and Sartre, while getting its name from a book entitled, The Theatre of the Absurd (1960) by Martin Esslin. Regardless of how we tag this, Spanish/French director Luis Buñuel's treatment is indeed charming and funny.

Fernando Rey stars as a diplomat from the country of "Miranda" who, along with his five constant friends, cannot seem to ever finish a meal. They are the bourgeoisie who are discreet in their sexual activities and their illegalities (Rey's character apparently smuggles cocaine) while maintaining a sort of absurd decorum in which good manners are paramount. A café runs out of tea, well, they will content themselves with coffee. No coffee, well, water will be fine. Guests arrive a day ahead of time, well, we'll go out instead, won't you join us. When a company of soldiers on maneuvers shows up at the house just as they are sitting down to dinner, they are invited to join them, and when the police come to arrest Rey, they all politely intercede only to follow him to jail. When the one finds that his wife is in his friend's bedroom, he is too polite to object.

Buñuel's technique runs realistic scenes into dream sequences without warning. When a soldier sits down to tea to tell his story of horror, all listen politely. When, for the umpteenth time they are à la table, a curtain parts and they find themselves on stage in front of an audience, they discreetly excuse themselves, saying they have forgotten their lines.

Of course Buñuel must have his little satire of the church, and here he uses a monseigneur who becomes a gardener who hears a last rites confession that reveals that the confessor murdered his, the monseigneur's, parents many years ago. The monseigneur politely and without being ruffled, allows that Jesus forgives him and leaves him in a state of grace, which soothes his conscience as he then picks up a shotgun....

So seamlessly does Buñuel weave his tapestry, that it's sometimes hard to tell when reality ends and the dreams begin, but that is perhaps the point. Our dreams are absurd of course, but then again so is our reality.

You won't be dissapointed in buying this DVD. I say this not only because the movie is absolutely fabulous (if you want plot information, read the review by Leonard Maltin above), but because of the great job the criterion collection has done with this package. The newly restored image of the film is beautifull. The subtitles do the script justice, unlike subtitles on a lot of other films. The 28 minute documentary is nice to watch.It contains a lot of interesting information, as well as some rare footage of the master doing what he loves best, preparing martinis (or as he calls them, "Buñueloni's").

The real treat in the package is 98 minute long documentary on Buñuel. I never expected it to be so informative and so entertaining at the same time. It's filmed with interesting anecdotes from lifelong collaborators,friends, and family. The documentary also includes rare footage of Buñuel speaking freely among friends and sharing his opinions on a variety of subject matters.

If you are a fan of Buñuel's work, you will find this DVD package to be worth every penny. If you're unfamiliar with Buñuel, do yourself a favor and purchase this DVD for you are about to stumble upon one of cinema's most gifted artists.

"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" unfolds with the absurd logic of a recurrent dream, and since the DVD has been beautifully restored, one is able to dream the dream in vivid color: Elegantly dressed guests arrive for a dinner party only to have the hostess inform them that they have arrived on the wrong night; thus, they keep making appointments for dinners that are continually interrupted for one reason or another--all of the reasons being as patently ridiculous as are the characters: a bishop, who arrives at the house and asks to be hired as a gardener, and then relates the story of his macabre childhood; a soldier, who arrives at a restaurant (that has run out of tea and coffee), asks to join the ladies, whom he has never met before, and relates the story of his macabre childhood; a General, who arrives with his platoon a day early at the same house with the same hostess in time for dinner, and then, after the General invites a Private to relate the story of his macabre dream to the hosts and the invited guests (who listen attentively), both General and platoon depart for maneuvers (but not before inviting all the guests to his house for dinner, where even more macabre events unfold.). Thus, the dreams contain dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams et cetera ad absurdum.

This film is for anyone who has ever had recurrent nightmares of waiting for a bus on the wrong corner; of being about to take a test only to discover that one has studied the wrong subject; of being about give a lecture only to discover that one has forgotten the notes; or of performing on stage with a mouth stuffed with peanut-butter when one's cue is coming up. All the absurd commonplaces that make perfect sense when one is dreaming. And much of the "discreet charm" of the bourgeois characters in this film derives from the fact that one is dreaming their nightmares and not one's own.

Bunuel followed nobody (and, unfortunately, nobody follows Bunuel, maybe nobody can). I've seen this movie more times than I can count. Why? Because it is the perfect reminder that there's a huge universe of possibilities in filmmaking and storytelling beyond the narrow financial constraints of Hollywood. Bunuel taught me, first of all, that our everyday lives are exceedingly narrow, and that one doesn't need to invoke flaming airborne automobiles and exploding cities to get into extraordinary, unsettling situations. Bunuel achieves these through the most subtle and economical means, showing us how little one needs to stray from the usual for most of us to get rattled.

On a second thought though, after I saw my first Bunuel movie ('The Exterminating Angel') I was so stunned that I couldn't see a Hollywood movie for many months afterwards (they all seemed created for and by morons). So if you enjoy your Hollywood fare, maybe better skip Bunuel...