--- title: "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie" critics_score: 80 critics_reviews: 13 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972): what the critics said Critics' score 80 from 13 reviews: 12 positive, 1 mixed, 0 negative. Most critics warmly praise The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, with agreement strongest around Buñuel’s dry humour and control of its surreal interruptions. The repeatedly thwarted dinners give the reviews a common focus: a funny, bitter exposure of upper-class entitlement, hypocrisy and greed. Praise centres on the direction, particularly the deadpan staging and playful shifts between dreams and social rituals, though the handling of the ensemble also earns approval. Reservations concern how sharply the satire still cuts and how strange its disruptions now feel. The AV Club finds the social criticism less pointed with distance, while still admiring Buñuel’s inventiveness. Time Out offers the sole mixed assessment, enjoying the mischief but questioning whether some original strangeness has faded; The Guardian argues that historical distance makes the underlying weirdness more insistent. The spread is chiefly between enthusiasm and qualified enjoyment, with no outright rejection. ## The Guardian — Peter Bradshaw Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 28 June 2012. Buñuel’s 1972 surreal masterpiece is stranger and more sensual than ever, with its weirdness under the conventions throbbing more insistently now that those conventions are historically distant. The critic singles out the superbly disturbing scene in which a dinner party discovers it is on stage before an audience. [Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/28/discreet-charm-bourgeoisie-review) ## The New York Times — Vincent Canby Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 29 October 1972. The critic praises Buñuel's brilliant new comedy as free in form yet lucid and wise, a collection of funny and somber thoughts on the French upper middle class by a master moralist, humorist and social critic. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/29/archives/brilliant-bourgeoisie-brilliant-bourgeoisie.html) ## Variety — Variety Staff Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 31 December 1971. Luis Buñuel adds another fine film to his record with this surrealistically oriented tale of bourgeois types that encompasses politics, the Church, the army and the upper class in a timely and timeless way; the director at 72 remains a youthful filmmaker with impeccable handling of a solid cast. [Read the review](https://variety.com/1971/film/reviews/le-charme-discret-de-la-bourgeoisie-1200422760/) ## Empire — David Parkinson Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 31 March 2006. The critic calls it a mordant masterpiece and Buñuel's most artistically complete film, praising its innovative imagery and games with reality while noting the satire on the bourgeoisie is delivered with humour rather than violence. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/discreet-charm-bourgeoisie-review/) ## The AV Club — Scott Tobias Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 29 March 2002. The critic finds the film still great due to Buñuel's command of the medium and inventive design, even if its satire feels less sharp in a later era. He highlights the reversal of the premise from The Exterminating Angel and the director's shift to a more playful prankster mode. [Read the review](https://www.avclub.com/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-1798195953) ## The Independent Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 6 August 1992. The review highlights the film's re-release as one of Buñuel's great late works, praising its formal simplicity, deadpan mise-en-scène, and the way it blends absurdity with a clear sense of situations and relationships while showing the characters' inner lives directly. [Read the review](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/film-dining-out-on-the-story-1538873.html) ## Little White Lies — Anton Bitel Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 20 June 2022. The critic describes the film as a deliciously funny but bitter send-up of the entitled, hypocritical upper classes and their thwarted dinner plans, highlighting its cynical take on bourgeois corruption and surreal interruptions. [Read the review](https://lwlies.com/home-ents/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie) ## Slant Magazine — Ed Gonzalez Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 13 September 2003. The critic calls the film a dry vintage, not the director's most lucid critique but still delectable for its wry set pieces and comic fierceness. He singles out the memorable disruptions to the bourgeois characters' dinner attempts and the way the sketches peel back layers of entitlement. [Read the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie/) ## The Times — Kevin Maher Rating ★★★★☆. 8 September 2022. The late-career classic is simultaneously darkly satirical, bleak, witty and lightly amusing as it batters the French class system through snobbish diners endlessly seeking an elusive meal. The critic singles out the withering portrait of status-craving characters who ridicule commoners. [Read the review](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-1972-review-bleak-witty-and-lightly-amusing-jt2pd3k2d) ## Time Out — Dave Calhoun Rating 3/5. 26 June 2012. The review calls it an amusing satire on polite society with a tricksy, improvisatory story of aborted meals that retains mischievous energy, though it may have lost some of its original strangeness over time. [Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie) ## Eye for Film — Jennie Kermode Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 30 June 2012. The critic finds the film darkly hilarious and pleasurable in its surreal class satire, where a bourgeois group's repeated failed attempts to dine expose their greed, hypocrisy and mediocrity. Buñuel's playful structure and symbolic devices keep viewers engaged while implicating them in the characters' entrapment. [Read the review](http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-1972-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Collider — Andrew Taylor Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 18 July 2022. The critic calls it Buñuel’s funniest and most accessible film, a perfect introduction to the director’s work that satirizes the pretensions and entitlement of the upper middle class through interrupted dinners and increasingly surreal dream sequences. [Read the review](https://collider.com/discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie-luis-bunuel-funniest-most-accessible-movie/) ## /Film — Hoai-Tran Bui Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 20 January 2020. The piece presents the film as an exasperating yet enthralling absurdist class satire and the original 'eat the rich' movie, in which wealthy friends are repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to dine by bizarre events and dreams. It highlights the surrealist masterpiece's appeal as a perfect chaser to modern social satires. [Read the review](https://www.slashfilm.com/571715/best-foreign-movies-and-tv-streaming-january-17/) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/the-discreet-charm-of-the-bourgeoisie.md