Luis Buñuel turns interrupted dinners into a dry, unsettling comedy, with a cast that never begs for laughs. A few interruptions repeat a joke we have already understood, but the acting keeps these entitled people entertaining.
Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie makes a good evening out of people failing to have one. It is a funny, controlled comedy about prosperous friends whose attempts to dine together keep going wrong, and we recommend it with a caveat about the repetition. The interruptions grow stranger, but the friends’ expectation that they ought to be having a pleasant time remains remarkably firm. Their confidence gives the film plenty to work with for its 101 minutes.
The screenplay, by Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, gives the group an ambition small enough to seem harmless: eat together and enjoy the company. They are used to having their comforts provided and their distinctions respected. Having to try again is an affront. The writing finds comedy in the persistence of these habits under increasingly unreasonable conditions, without requiring us to decode every interruption. It is easy enough to recognise people who think an inconvenience to them must be a serious matter.
Fernando Rey gives Don Rafael a composure that makes any disturbance worth waiting for. Delphine Seyrig, as Simone Thévenot, and Stéphane Audran, as Alice Sénéchal, make the social niceties seem so practised that they can be funny without being exaggerated. Paul Frankeur, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Cassel help keep the company persuasive when the situations cease to be plausible. The actors take their characters’ expectations seriously, and their restraint gives us time to notice what is objectionable about them.
Edmond Richard’s cinematography presents the absurd situations plainly, keeping the people and their relations easy to follow. There is no need to announce a change of mood every time ordinary explanations fail, and the visual restraint makes the intrusions funnier. Pierre Guffroy’s production design makes the settings for polite entertaining convincing, so the guests’ expectations do not look ridiculous before anything has happened. Hélène Plemiannikov’s editing lets each renewed attempt to eat establish itself, encouraging us to entertain the possibility that this one might work. That repeated settling down is essential to the comedy.
We felt uncomfortable when the diners ridiculed people below them in the social order. Their ease in one another’s company had been pleasant to watch, and the casual contempt made that pleasure feel less innocent. Luis Buñuel does not have to make them uniformly repellent to expose their entitlement. Their good company makes it harder to dismiss the behaviour as something only unpleasant people do.
The limitation is that the film sometimes seems content to demonstrate what we have already grasped. Another obstruction to another meal can be amusing without telling us much more about the people waiting to eat it. Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière keep changing the circumstances, but the underlying complaint about privilege becomes familiar. There are stretches when the pleasure depends almost entirely on the cast’s timing, and the satire feels less searching than its inventiveness first suggests.
As a comedy of manners, it is unusually willing to let ordinary explanations fall away. Anyone expecting a farce in which every complication eventually fits together will need to adjust to its looser succession of frustrations. The film remains accessible because the wish to sit down and eat needs so little explaining, however strange the obstacles become. Watch it with someone who enjoys bad manners performed with complete composure.
