Academy Award-winner The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a largely surreal comedy film, following a few characters, including a corrupt ambassador from a fictional Latin American country, Miranda. As the title suggests, to a degree it's about uncovering the true, and not necessarily clean, life of the bourgeoisie. It has some success, and also as the title suggests, charm there. I laughed at the couple sneaking out to have sex, coming back to greet their guests with grass in their hair. Some of the characters are involved in drugs. Some resort to violence. There are other absurd things that made me laugh- the man shooting a toy is one.Some things also stood out, not necessarily for comic value. The childhood memory the lieutenant had of his mother's ghost convincing him to kill his evil guardian isn't funny, but is an interesting twist to an already-abstract film. Later, the priest finding himself having to bless the man who killed his parents is another twist, and it's interesting to see how the priest will react to the situation.That said, I found myself enjoying the first half more so than the rest of the film. As we delve deeper into the dreams within dreams, the film loses its structure, and I found myself wanting more plot. Even with the beginning, the laughs weren't coming as fast and furiously as I would have liked. Ultimately, this is a film catered to a certain taste that won't work with everybody.

This French film from BAFTA nominated director Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou, Land Without Bread, Belle De Jour) has a very iconic poster, the big pair of lips with legs wearing stockings and a bowler hat, and being in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die I was hoping the film itself would be as good as the poster. Basically the film consists of guests gathering for a dinner together, and this is intertwined with the individual characters having dreams about weird things happening at the dinner, making the latter of the film complex and virtual. The guests attending the dinner are Ambassador Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), Madame Simone Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig), M. Thevenot (Paul Frankeur) and Florence (Bulle Ogier), with the evening hosted by Alice Sénéchal (BAFTA nominated Stéphane Audran) and her husband Henri (Jean-Pierre Cassel). You are not sure of all the scenes, apart from the obvious things, whether they are part of a dream or reality, as every time the upper-middle class people try to have their dinner something interrupts them. Events in the dinner attempts include dropped turkeys/chickens, the table appearing on a theatre stage in front of a live audience, dead characters walking around as blood-covered zombies, and heavily armed men storming in and killing everyone with machine guns. Also starring Julien Bertheau as Bishop Dufour, Claude Piéplu as Colonel and Michel Piccoli as Home Secretary. Despite not knowing where to go and what was real in this film, I did find it an interesting watch, especially with the interruptions and bizarre scenarios, like the theatre and gun scenes, and the editing is certainly inventive, so I would say it is a worthwhile surreal comedy drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced, and it won the BAFTA for Best Screenplay, and it was nominated for Best Film and Best Sound Track, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film. Very good!

French-Italian-Spanish co-production under the helm of director Luis Buñuel concerning an odd-duck group of upper-class friends and acquaintances in Paris who meet often for meals and conversation, only to rarely savor their cuisine due to a peculiar series of interruptions. Buñuel, who also co-authored the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière, at times gently skewers the hungry wealthy; his characters are not decadent nor lazy, perhaps just comically fettered; the filmmaker doesn't score points against their lives as much as he prods the folly of their ways. The lapses of reality into a satirical daisy-chain of dreams is surprising at first but finally monotonous, especially as Buñuel becomes less sly here and more mean-spirited (I could have done without the police interrogation and the piano torture). Still, there are some marvelous visual touches (such as the dinner table on-stage) accompanied by a subtle yet vivid use of color, and the cast is uniformly excellent. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film. **1/2 from ****

The aristocracy met its match in Luis Buñuel, who throughout his career delighted in kicking the legs out from under the hypocrisies and pretensions of the rich and powerful. One of the late director's last and most effective satires was this typically mannered but nonetheless savage attack on society's ultimate villains: the church, the military and, most of all, the idle upper class, seen here frustrated while attempting to indulge in their favorite social ritual: dining out. The film is loosely organized into an elliptical series of surreal (and sometimes unrelated) episodes, in which every chance for a group of wealthy friends to share a simple meal is frustrated by, among other distractions: a funeral, a military training exercise, and finally by a band of terrorists who gun them all down in (appropriately) cold blood. Buñuel's signature wit and dream symbolism is in ample evidence throughout, and his eye for social absurdity was rarely so critical or keen. But maybe the best joke of all in the film is that its intended targets are also the ideal audience for such highbrow humor, laughing alongside Buñuel without even recognizing themselves as the butt of his subtle mockery.