What if an entire film were based around characters sitting down for dinner but the meal never arrived? This is the whacked-out premise of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a deranged masterpiece from one of cinema’s greatest weirdos: the iconoclastic Spanish-Mexican auteur Luis Buñuel. He is best-known for sensationally strange and surreal productions that beam in from different planes of existence, telling stories that kind of make sense until, all of a sudden, they very much do not.
Buñuel’s 1929 short film Un Chien Andalou, which he co-wrote with Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, is perhaps his most famous work, notorious for its grotesque close-up shot of an eyeball. But The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which was released in 1972 and won an Academy award for best foreign language film, is his most financially successful and among his most acclaimed. The film is less a story per se than a scattered series of incidents involving a handful of hungry socialites including François (Paul Frankeur), Simone (Delphine Seyrig) and Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), an ambassador from a South American nation.
Their dinner plans never come to fruition for a variety of reasons, spanning simple misunderstandings to out-of-this-world surprises. After arriving at the house of Alice and Henri Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel) on the wrong day, a decision is made to relocate to a nearby inn. The group sit down and contemplate what to order – discussing the hare pâté and whether to drink red wine or martinis. But after hearing the sound of weeping coming from the next room where the proprietor is lying dead on a bed, they lose their appetite and call off dinner.
Another attempt at a meal is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a group of army men – led by a joint-smoking Colonel, because why not – who consume all the food. Later still (this one’s my favourite) they’re seated at a table, everything finally looking like it’s coming together, two roast chickens brought out on a tray. But they discover … the chickens are made of plastic! Then a red curtain rises and it’s revealed that the diners are situated on a stage in front of a large audience. They are, it seems, for some reason or maybe no reason at all, now performers in a theatre production.
Attempting to rationalise what exactly is going on incorrectly assumes a degree of logic and a pathway to clear meaning. Buñuel’s most famous films have a curious relation to realism, often sustaining the moment-by-moment rhythms we associate with reality, then ditching rational or anticipated outcomes, or simply refusing to explain something essential. Another of his great films, 1962’s The Exterminating Angel, has the opposite premise to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: characters who attend a dinner party simply cannot leave. The door is unlocked, so they could theoretically walk out – and yet they cannot. We don’t know why. It doesn’t matter.
The label “dreamlike” is often used in discussion of his work, like other auteurs such as David Lynch whose films have hallucinogenic qualities. However Buñuel is starkly different to a visually hallucinogenic director like Lynch, in that his films are often pointedly satirical and political, and sometimes – as in Discreet Charm – dripping with condemnation for the putridity of modern society. This includes (but is not limited to) the follies and prejudices of the bourgeoisie. The marvellously weird Discreet Charm belongs to a canon that critiques the middle-class by focusing on their recreational indulgences, many of which, curiously, contain “game” in their titles – for instance The Rules of the Game, The Game, Game Night, The Dinner Game.
At the risk of participating in a foolish search for meaning, perhaps The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie uses a longing for dinner to make a point that humans are always hungry for something, but never satisfied. Or perhaps the film explores a fear among middle and upper-class people: that the aristocratic functions granting them privilege might one day break down, forcing them to share their caviar, champagne and spoils.
I like to think “Buñuellian” also to some extent means Baudrillardian, the film-maker satirising a human world of weird simulations that don’t just distort reality but divide people and perpetuate injustice. “In a world as badly made as ours,” Buñuel once said, “there is only one road: rebellion.” And what a way to rebel: by crafting some of the strangest and most interesting satires ever made – once seen and, truly, never forgotten.
