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.
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.