The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Melissa Acker
December 2013
Cinématèque Annotations on Film
Issue 70
Six figures stride restlessly down a barren highway. He falls behind, she adjusts a buckle
on her shoe and slowly they outpace one another – hardly an opening scene to arrest the
senses. The magic of Luis Buñuel’s Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972) lies in its endless ambiguity. To watch through a
prescriptive lens would vanquish it. A group of affluent Parisians comprised of oily
businessmen, their haughty wives, a spacey sister-in-law and a paranoid diplomat
repeatedly come together for a meal that is continually interrupted by performances of
absurdity. The interruptive events range from the death of a restaurateur to the cavalry
showing up between courses. Once the premise of the film is clearly articulated we are
plunged into the internal dramas of the characters.
Part of a “trilogy” about journeys that began with La voie lactée (Milky Way, 1969) and
ended with Le fantôme de la liberté (The Phantom of Liberty, 1974), the opening image
of the wandering bourgeoisie establishes the film’s structure as reliant upon a cycle of
increasing incoherence (1). This replaces the usual motion of film into catharsis and
closure (2). The minimalism of the plot asks that we pay close attention to how the story
is told. We watch, listen and watch again. We must be aware but not too aware, as
ultimately our own answers will teach us how to consume this film.
Gone is the grace of narration and “form”-ally announcing itself is the theme of
interruption – a device that will keep us constantly aloft, yet engaged. Once deemed
anarchistic and surreal, Buñuel’s tendency to interrupt a narrative line had become Oscar-
worthy by the time of the film’s release. The classical, modern form of bourgeois art
emphasizes the qualities of order, proportion and harmony (3). The deceptive charms of
the characters and tinges of fluxed narrative keep us transfixed as though we are watching
a Hollywood tale from the golden era. Any keen purveyor of Mme Senechal’s (Stéphane
Audran) sartorial sashaying of silk and little black dresses are instantly transported every
time she appears on screen, swigging a martini or panting with her lover at high noon.
The endless seductive glamour of the six main characters helps to sustain a certain sense
of rationality that carries us through the film, despite all-else rallying against it. Buñuel
uses the ordinary yet comical annoyance of interruptions as a structural tool to play out
the “anti-form” of the film (4). This is introduced through the nature and extent of
interruptions that guarantee the virtual absence of a continuous plot. A unity of contraries
is aptly displayed by the bishop-turned-gardener-turned-murderer and the incongruities of
space such as the restaurant turned into a funeral parlour and the dining room transformed
into a theatrical stage (5). In one scene the stage is literally set for mockery, as an
interruption comes when the curtain rises to reveal that the group are all part of an onstage performance! Being an agitator against the bourgeoisie, Buñuel keenly reminds us
at every twist and turn that their civilization is precarious. So, when struggling to curb his
rebellious reflexes to fit in with their traditional artistic ideals, to his and our amusement,
he doesn’t. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie demonstrates that form and anti-form
can co-exist (6), paving the way for later generations of experimental narrative
filmmakers such as David Lynch and Pedro Almodóvar.
The characters’ desire to dine together is continuously thwarted by a series of ridiculous
incidents. Our attention is constantly redirected to dreams or anecdotes that are
juxtaposed with the main plot and therefore deflect from it (7). An example of this is the
scene of the group wandering down the highway that is intermittently spliced into the
film. Herein lies the magical ambiguity this film bestows upon us. The image of the six
rambling characters may appear to lack purpose since Buñuel himself refused to ascribe
any particular meaning to it (8). However, by simply showing us this interpolated
sequence, our instincts guide us to the cinematic delights of elucidation and clarification:
what it could be, what it might be and what it just isn’t. Thus we also begin to learn the
rules of engagement with the film. This pivotal scene plays heavily with and on narrative
continuity. It “interrupts” the more conventional sequences that encourage us to trust the
story and form expectations in order to reveal the work of the audience in the production
of meaning (9). The exclusion of important parts of the dialogue due to the sound of low
flying jets and radiator pipes invite the audience to further speculate on this meaning. The
wandering scene is also one of few in the film that allows us to identify with the
characters. Its broken temporality (the film starts and ends with this scene), discontinuity
(characters are in different clothes each time it resurfaces), and its unpredictable
appearance are “sympathetic” to this identification (10). I too do up my shoe buckle, fall
behind and outpace the others. We are one and the same. However, these feelings are
instantly dismissed as the next random scene cuts our stroll short, the interrupter is now
the interrupted. The mind must be open to constant readjustment and fluid to its own
myriad of interpretations. Why does the 52-year-old housemaid look 17? Why does the
diplomat’s aggressor pull a head of lettuce from her bag? To try and understand this film
literally will only lead to rage.
According to Buñuel, the ideal life consisted of waking for two hours and sleeping and
dreaming for the remaining 22 (11). He often began a film by establishing a framework
of latent, rather than explicit, associations that came from his subconscious, eliminating
anything that might have obvious symbolic meaning (12). He drew deeply from the
dream life in order to confront spectators with the frightening disorder that lurked in the
abyss of their minds. But dreams were also considered to be a part of everyday life, so the
dividing line between the realms of the conscious and unconscious was abolished. The
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie uses the Chinese box-like technique of dreams
embedded within dreams to exemplify this (13). Towards the end, overlapping dreams of
the characters that grow out of seemingly real situations take us from one deceptive trip
to another. As the dreamer wakes up, further peculiar things happen until the bizarre
reality we began to believe in is rendered totally indistinguishable from the realm of
dream.
Every “inserted” tale carries some sort of allusion to death, something the six main
characters seem to ignore. The dinner party massacre – and the sergeant’s celebratory
torture methods – are inherently macabre flights-of-fantasy boxed up by the social
niceties of a discreet bourgeois existence. Buñuel places us in the realm of Surrealism
through the incessant blurring of dreams with reality. He is, of course, the original
Surrealist. Along with Salvador Dalì, he made the masterpiece Un chien Andalou (1929)
– the film that commenced their assault on the bourgeoisie (14). The signature shot from
Un chien Andalou is of a razor slicing through an eye. The visual violence of this earlier
work starkly contrasts with the soft and sensitive Surrealism depicted in The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The instinctual nature of Surrealism (and the reality of daily
life) always deflates social propriety. This is comically demonstrated by the Senechals.
When frivolity takes over, the couple escapes out the window to consummate their
lunchtime love behind some bushes, whilst their guests wait unknowingly downstairs.
Forever the saboteur of cultural and societal charades, Buñuel shattered the complacency
of modern viewers by creating a disquieting work that expressed his resistance to
bourgeois values. Whereas 40 years previously the surreally frenzied screen was
Buñuel’s “weapon of liberation”, it is now manifest in the cognitive power of viewers
(15). The grotesquely surreal nature of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie shakes us
to the core. But its playful form, exquisite irony and magical ambiguity provoke a sadochuckle from deep within us.
Endnotes
1. James Tobias, “Buñuel’s Net Work”, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie, ed. Marsha Kinder, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1999, p. 146.
2. Tobias, p. 146.
3. Victor Fuentes, “The Discreet Charm of the Postmodern”, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, ed. Marsha Kinder, Cambridge University Press, New York,
1999, p. 89. 4. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Interruption as Style”, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, ed. Marsha Kinder, Cambridge University Press, New York,
1999, p. 188.
5. Fuentes, pp. 90-91.
6. Fuentes, p. 89.
7. Fuentes, p. 91.
8. Tobias, p. 148.
9. Tobias, p. 152.
10. Tobias, p. 148.
11. “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972”, mostlycinema 18 December 2012:
http://mostlycinema.com/2012/12/18/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-1972/ .
12. Augustin Sanchez Vidal, “A Cultural Background”, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, ed. Marsha Kinder, Cambridge University Press, New York,
1999, p.70.
13. Fuentes, p. 91.
14. Fuentes, p. 83.
15. Fuentes, p. 86.
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie/The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972
France 102 mins)
Prod Co: Greenwich Film Production – Paris Prod: Serge Silberman Dir: Luis Buñuel
Scr: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière Phot: Edmond Richard Ed: Hélène
Plemiannikov Prod Des: Pierre Guffroy
Cast: Fernando Rey, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Stéphane Audran, Paul Frankeur, Delphine
Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Michel Piccoli
end article section