Film Review: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, 1972)
Luis Buñuel, a filmmaker whose career began in the 1920s as a radical participant in the surrealist movement, established himself as a provocateur whose work consistently challenged social norms and aesthetic conventions. Alongside peers like Salvador Dalí, Buñuel crafted films that were deliberately transgressive, iconoclastic, and even “dangerous” in their rejection of mainstream sensibilities. Works such as Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Âge d’Or (1930) cemented his reputation as an artist who revelled in provocation, using shock tactics to dismantle bourgeois complacency and religious dogma. Consequently, his films rarely found favour with mass audiences but became cult objects of fascination for art-house enthusiasts and critics who celebrated his intellectual audacity. By the 1970s, however, Buñuel’s late-career resurgence saw his work gain unprecedented accessibility and popularity, a shift that can be attributed to the alignment of his iconoclastic ethos with the era’s anti-establishment sentiments and pervasive cynicism. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), a French surrealist black comedy that became Buñuel’s most commercially successful film. Its blend of absurdist satire and biting social critique resonated with a post-1968 audience weary of institutional authority, positioning Buñuel as a visionary whose earlier marginality had finally found mainstream relevance.
The film’s plot revolves around Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), an ambassador of the fictional South American nation Miranda, who accompanies his friend François Thévenot (Paul Frankeur), his wife Simone (Delphine Seyrig), and her sister Florence (Bulle Ogier), to a dinner party at the home of Alice Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran) and her husband Henri (Jean-Pierre Cassel). Upon arriving, Alice is baffled, as she believed the gathering was scheduled for the following day. The group instead retreats to a nearby inn, but their attempts to dine are repeatedly thwarted by a series of bizarre, recursive events. These include Acosta’s clandestine involvement in a cocaine-smuggling operation using diplomatic immunity, military exercises that disrupt their plans, Maoist guerrillas from Miranda attempting to assassinate Acosta, and the persistent presence of Monsignor Doufaur (Julien Bertheau), a Catholic bishop who seeks to live as a simple gardener. Many of these scenarios, including the dinner itself, are later revealed to be dreams or dreams within dreams, blurring the line between reality and illusion. The narrative’s structure, though fragmented, functions as a relentless critique of bourgeois pretensions, exposing the futility of the characters’ attempts to preserve social graces amid existential absurdity.
Buñuel’s collaboration with key figures in French cinema—screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and producer Serge Silberman—was instrumental in shaping the film’s conceptual framework. Carrière, a seasoned writer known for his work with many grand directors, brought a sharp wit and narrative precision to Buñuel’s surrealist vision. Silberman, Buñuel’s longtime collaborator, originated the film’s premise based on a real-life anecdote: he once invited friends for dinner only to forget the event the next day. This mundane occurrence became the seed for a sprawling exploration of human folly, with Buñuel and Carrière expanding it into a metafictional labyrinth of missed connections and delusions of grandeur. The trio’s synergy ensured that the film’s core idea—using a dinner party as a metaphor for societal dysfunction—was both intellectually rigorous and entertaining, striking a balance between abstract symbolism and grounded character dynamics.
While the film’s central plot is relatively simple, it serves as a scaffold for a series of surreal vignettes that prioritise thematic resonance over conventional narrative cohesion. The humour here is understated but incisive, deriving from the stark contrast between the characters’ rigid adherence to social propriety and the absurd circumstances that undo them. Buñuel mocks the bourgeoisie’s obsession with etiquette by subjecting them to humiliating indignities: they eat in silence while soldiers march past their table, they find themselves trapped in a military exercise, or they bumble through a clandestine drug deal with the same gravitas as a diplomatic negotiation. Beyond its class critique, the script also engages with contemporary issues, albeit subtly. The presence of Maoist guerrillas and Simone’s flirtatious defiance of her husband nod to the rise of militant leftism and feminist movements, while the bishop’s existential crisis satirises the hypocrisy of institutional religion. However, these elements occasionally feel underdeveloped, as the film’s focus remains fixed on the broader satire of bourgeois existence.
At 72, Buñuel maintained his experimental spirit, though his approach in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was more restrained than in his earlier films. He utilised video cameras—a then-novel technology—to streamline production, opting for static, carefully composed shots that lent the film a deliberate, almost theatrical pacing. The director’s surrealism here is less visceral than in his youth; instead of disorienting visuals, he relies on narrative incongruity to unsettle the audience. Yet in certain sequences, such as the haunting vignettes involving a ghostly dinner party or a macabre tale of a murdered man, Buñuel experiments with horror tropes, creating tension through restrained suspense rather than overt shocks. These moments reveal a filmmaker equally adept at genre conventions, prompting some critics to speculate that Buñuel could have thrived in exploitation cinema had he chosen to pursue it. The film’s aesthetic, while less flamboyant than his earlier work, is no less precise, with compositions that underscore the characters’ entrapment in their own delusions.
Production accounts suggest the film’s creation was a harmonious process, with Buñuel and his collaborators working in a relaxed, creative environment. This ease is evident in the performances, particularly Rey’s portrayal of Acosta, a diplomat whose aristocratic poise masks a sinister duality. Rey, fresh from his iconic role as a villainous drug lord in The French Connection, brings a chilling ambiguity to the character, embodying the film’s central tension between respectability and corruption. The cast as a whole exudes a naturalistic charm, their interactions feeling effortless even as the plot spirals into absurdity. Stéphane Audran, in particular, shines as Alice, whose bemused detachment underscores the film’s themes of existential futility.
The film’s editing is one of its greatest strengths, maintaining a brisk pace that prevents the narrative’s non-linear structure from overwhelming viewers. Buñuel and editor Jean-Claude Labroue ensure that the dream sequences and reality shifts remain coherent, though a recurring motif—a group of characters walking along an empty, desolate road—risks overindulging in “arthouse” symbolism. This scene, while thematically significant, occasionally feels like a directorial flourish that distracts from the film’s momentum. Such moments are rare, however, as the editing generally serves the story’s progression, balancing Buñuel’s surrealism with narrative clarity.
The commercial and critical success of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie marked a turning point in Buñuel’s career. It became a box-office hit in France and internationally, attracting audiences beyond the art-house niche, while critics lauded it as a masterpiece of satire and formal innovation. The film’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 1973 further cemented its legacy, proving that Buñuel’s radical vision could coexist with mainstream appeal. This recognition validated his lifelong commitment to challenging societal norms, even as the film’s gentle subversion—mocking rather than condemning its targets—appealed to a post-1968 audience weary of overt didacticism.
In retrospect, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is as a culmination of Buñuel’s career-long preoccupations: the hypocrisy of power, the fragility of social constructs, and the absurdity of human pretension. Its success demonstrated that even at an advanced age, Buñuel retained the ability to provoke and entertain, merging intellectual rigour with accessible comedy. The film’s enduring relevance lies in its universal critique of class and conformity, rendered with a wit and precision that transcends its 1970s context. For all its surrealism, the film remains strikingly grounded in human folly, a testament to Buñuel’s belief that the most profound truths can be found in the most ridiculous of dreams.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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