Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)
Directed by Luis Buñuel

Film Review

It is an odd thing that the two best known and most accessible films of Luis Buñuel - Un chien andalou (1929) and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972) - are also the two that are most ambiguous and resistant to interpretation.  Made at the two extreme ends of Buñuel's career, when the director was temporarily settled in France, these films could hardly be more different stylistically, yet both are surrealist masterpieces that are clearly intended as swipes at middleclass convention.  In contrast to the apparent randomness of Un chien andalou, Le Charme discret at least has a semblance of structure to it, but this doesn't necessarily make its meaning any easier to divine.  You can watch this film fifty times and each time read it in an entirely different way.

One theme that runs through much of Luis Buñuel's work, particularly his later films, is the portrayal of bourgeois convention as a blocker to individual freedom.   Buñuel's early interest in surrealism in the 1920s was partly fuelled by a desire to break free of his middleclass upbringing.  It is no coincidence that the Marquis de Sade would be one of the greatest influences on the young Buñuel, since Sade himself was obsessed with the search for unconditional freedom, although even he had to concede that a man can only be free in his imagination.  Any notion of freedom in the real world is totally illusory.

The protagonists of Buñuel's films are often portrayed as prisoners of their social milieu, and this is perhaps most evident in Le Charme discret.  Here, six middleclass friends (and a very peculiar bishop) not only appear to be chained to each other and compelled to repeat the same ritual of an interrupted dinner party ad infintum, but genuinely looks as if they are imprisoned in a bubble, one that progressively shrinks in the course of the film.  So devoted are these disciples of conformity to the unwritten rules of Bourgeois etiquette that they become oblivious to the bizarre things happening around them.  Instead of showing surprise (a natural reaction when a platoon of soldiers bursts into your house and demands refreshments), they merely repeat the same bland gestures and meaningless platitudes, as though they were soulless automata with a very limited repertoire of expression.  Evidently, discretion is the better part of Bourgeois gentility.   

After Sade, the second great influence on Buñuel was Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalytical theory.  Freud's revolutionary book The Interpretation of Dreams is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand Buñuel's films, since these films explore many of Freud's theories.  One Freudian notion that Buñuel was particularly interested in was the idea that dreams were invariably expressions of wish-fulfilment from the subconscious mind.  One manifestation of this is the so-called Oedipus complex, a latent desire to supplant the parent of one's own sex in order to possess the other - something which finds its way into a large number of Buñuel's films (Le Charme discret included).

The seamless merging of dreams and reality is central to Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, accentuating both its opacity and its dark, increasingly outlandish humour.  There are at least five signposted dream sequences in this film, each wrong-footing us into believing it represents reality, and there may well be several others.  The film consists of a series of episodes - some real, some not - in which the characters are constantly prevented from satisfying their desires.  Every time they sit down to eat together, the party is disrupted.  Attempts to make love are similarly thwarted by unexpected visitors.  Even an effort to get a drink in a café is doomed to failure.  Every one of these episodes plays out in a dream-like fashion, showing us a desire that is never fulfilled.

One interpretation of the film is that it is making a statement on the inherently barren nature of middle-class existence.  Buñuel seems to be implying that the strictures of Bourgeois conformity are so rigid, so limiting that anyone who subscribes to them is inevitably doomed to live a life without colour or meaning.  Bourgeois normality has its own tyranny that is every bit as demeaning as the Fascism that drove Buñuel into exile in the 1930s.   People cease to be people; they become machines, without soul.  They retain a vestige of carnal desire, but have lost the wherewithal to sate this desire.  This could explain one of the central recurring motifs in the film, the group of  Bourgeois friends walking quietly down a seemingly endless road in the middle of nowhere.  They do not know where they came from; they do not know where they are going to.  They just keep ambling, pursuing a hollow zombie-like existence that has ceased to have any meaning or purpose, a living death.

Film Synopsis

Monsieur and Madame Senechal have invited their friends, the Thevenots and Don Rafael, the Ambassador of a South American republic, to dinner, but, owing to a misunderstanding, their guests turn up a day early.  Realising their error, the Thevenots invite Madame Senechal to dine with them at a restaurant.  To their surprise, the restaurant is empty, and they soon discover why.  In an adjoining room lies the body of the restaurant's owner, who has just died.  The next time the Thevenots and Don Rafael call for a dinner date, the Senechals are too preoccupied in the bedroom to greet them.  Suspecting that they have entered a police trap (since they are involved in a drugs smuggling racket), the guests make a hurried departure.  A Catholic bishop then turns up on the Senechals' doorstep and insists on being their new gardener.  The next dinner party is disturbed by the arrival of a platoon of soldiers who are about to perform training exercises in the area.  By way of apology, the colonel in charge of the platoon invites the Senechals and their guests to dinner at his house.  This dinner party proves to be even more bizarre...