Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Micransix Crappy film

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Jackson Booth-Millard This French film from BAFTA nominated director Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou, Land Without Bread, Belle De Jour) has a very iconic poster, the big pair of lips with legs wearing stockings and a bowler hat, and being in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I was hoping the film itself would be as good as the poster. Basically the film consists of guests gathering for a dinner together, and this is intertwined with the individual characters having dreams about weird things happening at the dinner, making the latter of the film complex and virtual. The guests attending the dinner are Ambassador Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), Madame Simone Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig), M. Thevenot (Paul Frankeur) and Florence (Bulle Ogier), with the evening hosted by Alice Sénéchal (BAFTA nominated Stéphane Audran) and her husband Henri (Jean-Pierre Cassel). You are not sure of all the scenes, apart from the obvious things, whether they are part of a dream or reality, as every time the upper-middle class people try to have their dinner something interrupts them. Events in the dinner attempts include dropped turkeys/chickens, the table appearing on a theatre stage in front of a live audience, dead characters walking around as blood-covered zombies, and heavily armed men storming in and killing everyone with machine guns. Also starring Julien Bertheau as Bishop Dufour, Claude Piéplu as Colonel and Michel Piccoli as Home Secretary. Despite not knowing where to go and what was real in this film, I did find it an interesting watch, especially with the interruptions and bizarre scenarios, like the theatre and gun scenes, and the editing is certainly inventive, so I would say it is a worthwhile surreal comedy drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced, and it won the BAFTA for Best Screenplay, and it was nominated for Best Film and Best Sound Track, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. Very good!

Michael Neumann The aristocracy met its match in Luis Buñuel, who throughout his career delighted in kicking the legs out from under the hypocrisies and pretensions of the rich and powerful. One of the late director's last and most effective satires was this typically mannered but nonetheless savage attack on society's ultimate villains: the church, the military and, most of all, the idle upper class, seen here frustrated while attempting to indulge in their favorite social ritual: dining out. The film is loosely organized into an elliptical series of surreal (and sometimes unrelated) episodes, in which every chance for a group of wealthy friends to share a simple meal is frustrated by, among other distractions: a funeral, a military training exercise, and finally by a band of terrorists who gun them all down in (appropriately) cold blood. Buñuel's signature wit and dream symbolism is in ample evidence throughout, and his eye for social absurdity was rarely so critical or keen. But maybe the best joke of all in the film is that its intended targets are also the ideal audience for such highbrow humor, laughing alongside Buñuel without even recognizing themselves as the butt of his subtle mockery.

Lee Eisenberg Years after directing the surrealist movie "Un chien andalou", Luis Buñuel made "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" about a group of upper-class people whose attempts to have a nice dinner get repeatedly interrupted. The movie is simultaneously a bizarre comedy and a mockery of the bourgeoisie's materialistic attitude towards life, and a really good one at that. To crown everything, the characters accept the events, no matter how weird things get! Fernando Rey, hot off playing one of the villains in "The French Connection", plays a diplomat from the fictional Latin American country of Miranda*. People address him about the gap between rich and poor, and about his government's use of excessive force against protesters, and meanwhile a terrorist (revolutionary?) follows him everywhere. He comes across as a slimy guy, but you can't help but admire him.The scene where everyone walks towards an unspecified location seems to reflect the lives that this bunch of people leads in general. Their wealth deprives them of any purpose in life, and so they are left wandering, metaphorically speaking.All in all, I definitely recommend this one. Also starring Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Stéphane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel.*While there is no country called Miranda, there is a Mirandese language spoken in northeast Portugal. Just a side note.

oyason Six upper middle class jerks attempt to meet for dinner on a number of occasions and find themselves caught up in many a farce. In "The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie", the everyday becomes entangled with dream at every turn. The reality of the drug running foreign ambassador comes into direct conflict with the guerrilla forces his domestic policies engender, the gardener monseigneur of the church ends up taking confession from his parents' murderer while the culprit is on his deathbed, the cocktail party hosted by a general breaks down into a small battle in his dining room, a sexually frustrated couple are forced to elude their company and couple out in the garden, an afternoon luncheon is turned into an audit of fratricidal confession from a young army lieutenant. At every crossroads, the pretentious "civility" of professional society finds itself disrupted by the casual violence and mayhem that underscores their class privilege. Bunuel's use of the nightmare tells the audience what the bourgeoisie knows very well: they know what a bunch of casual gangsters they actually are, and sleep will not let them hide from themselves. And none of the charm of the bourgeoisie will be enough to break them away from their ongoing isolation from themselves and nature, expressed very cleanly by Bunuel's repeated image of the six professionals, in semi-formal dress, walking down a country road in the middle of nowhere. And it's all very funny, in an unfunny sort of way.Bunuel's masterpiece holds up well, almost forty years after its release. Here's a farce that demonstrates just how far a "satirist" like Sasha Baron Cohen ("Borat") really has to go before he has anything substantial to say with farce or film.