Saw The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a Lois Bunuel film. It relentlessly attacks Bunuel's old enemy: the upper-middle-class. We follow 3 couples as they try to have dinner together again and again. The first night fails because the hosts have given the guests the wrong date. The next time, the hosts are too busy having sex to entertain. The husbands are meanwhile engaged in a scheme whereby they smuggle cocaine via diplomat. This scheme has brought them attention from the cops and from nebulously defined 'terrorists.'
The couples are made out to be completely hypocritical on every count. They archly sniff at the dangers of marijuana, but they are smuggling cocaine. They smirk at the low-class way their chauffeur drinks a martini while their friends are screwing in the bushes outside. They love the idea of "free love" but only so far as it will get them laid. At one point they dismissively list off all of the popular ideologies of their time (fascism, feminism, religion, peace, etc) implying that they are above all that, but of course revealing that they are merely beneath all that.
On top of all of this is Bunuel's trademark straight-faced absurdity. A maid who looks to be about 20 reveals she is in fact 52. A bishop is for some reason the gardener of one of the couples. We are trapped for several scenes inside of increasingly realistic-seeming dreams (this robs the couples even of a plot!) Indeed dreams and little asides about ghosts are common elements. Perhaps the ghosts and dinners are meant to allude to Macbeth or Hamlet? There's a recurrent image of the sextet striding purposefully down a road which leads nowhere. This is perhaps a straightforward metaphor for Bunuel's conception of the titular bourgeoisie. I see little charm here however and more cantankerous pot shots. Perhaps I've missed this one but, absurdity aside, it all seems a bit done to me. How above it all I am!
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