The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Luis Buñuel, France, 1972 (8.6*)
Best Foreign Film (AA)
#99, Top Ranked 1000 Films, 2011 Update, all polls.

Probably the most affable and accessible of the Spanish master’s films, as many are a bit serious or obscure for the average filmgoer. On the surface, this is a comedy about a suburban dinner party.

However, as you would expect from Buñuel, you don’t exactly plan then have a successful dinner party. This story begins innocently enough, but you soon find yourself once again in the mind of an inventive and creative filmmaker, the same one who in his The Exterminating Angel, has guests to a dinner enjoy the meal and the company then find they cannot leave the room.

The dinner party gets delayed by a series of random and spontaneous events that include the hosts having afternoon sex, and a military patrol on war game maneuvers uses the house for a field headquarters.

As usual in his films, what you get out of this is going to depend on what you bring into it, but I wouldn’t look for anything too deep here – I believe this film is more enjoyable than most of his because of that, and for the excellent cast led by Fernando Rey, and the award-winning Stéphane Audran.

Winner of the Foreign Language Film Oscar® for 1972, and six awards total out of 11 nominations

#16 on the Top Ranked Comedy Films of All-Time, 2011 Update

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Viridiana

Luis Bunuel, 1961, Spain, bw (7.9*)
For those who would like a more normal, non-surrealist intro to the surrealist friend of Dali, Spanish director Luis Bunuel (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), this is a good early film with a nearly straightforward story. A nun named Virigiana, played by Silvia Pinal, gets word that her uncle, played by Bunuel favorite Fernando Rey, is ill and aging, which isn't entirely true. She doesn’t really want to leave the convent just before her consecration but the Mother Superior orders her to go.

There at her uncle’s estate, she realizes the wealth he has and that she can do some good with it after all. She visits the town and invites several of the local homeless beggars to come live at the estate as long as they respect everyone and don’t fight and follow simple rules. The ensuing events test her faith as well as faith in mankind. Rather than an apparently wandering film like Discreet Charm, this story has a cohesive progression to an end, which should delight those who haven’t found Bunuel understandable to this point. He admits in interviews that he rarely has a story in mind, and just largely improvises when the cameras roll. In this film, he apparently had more of a script and perhaps it shows as this is his most critically acclaimed film.

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