Discreet Charm

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
Directed by Luis Buñuel
France / 1972
102 minutes / French, Latin & Spanish / Color / Restoration / DCP

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-middle-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, their attempts to eat thwarted by vaudevillian events both actual and imagined, including terrorist attacks, military maneuvers, and ghostly apparitions. Stringing together a discontinuous, digressive series of absurdist set pieces, Buñuel and his screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carrière send a cast of European-film greats — including Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Bulle Ogier — through a maze of desire deferred, frustrated, and interrupted. The Oscar-winning pinnacle of Buñuel’s late-career ascent as a feted maestro of the international art house, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” is also one of his most gleefully radical assaults on the values of the ruling class.

Intro and discussion by Cliff Froehlich, former executive director of Cinema St. Louis and adjunct professor of film studies at Webster University.