“Two very different ways of directing the film were open to me: realism, or Marx Brothers. How can one separate the real from the surreal? In the end, they blend and merge into one other.”
Luis Buñuel
For their third collaboration, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière chose to make a film based on the principle of repetition. Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie revolves entirely around a ritual dear to this caste: the meal – or, in this case, the absence of a meal since the protagonists never manage to finish their feasts. The perpetual frustration this causes to the characters has a powerfully comical effect, accentuated by the increasingly absurd, dark humour. Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Stéphane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel portray these bourgeois clichés, revealing their flaws and their quirks.
