Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie is addictive for more than one reason, among which strikes me how subtly the entire cast embraces its peculiar sense of humour elevating the page towards unscriptable dramatic heights.
Often said throughout the film, ‘avec plaisir’ isn’t just a polite expression of delight but also an exquisite moment of unwitting irony—pleasure being, strive as it might, the one thing Buñuel’s jolly middle-class brigade constantly fails to achieve. Relentless dinner parties are interrupted by a cascade of increasingly preposterous impediments. A café in central Paris unlikely runs out of tea, coffee, and milk—but they do have water. An extramarital love affair is not consumed as the passion is chilled by the inconvenient arrival of a friend, and husband. And yet they go, tenaciously, whether running away from dubious ancestral fears or made invulnerable by their charming form or bravery. They move from house to house beautifully dressed in compact formation—unquiet, almost comical, the clicking of their heels. Lacking an author and a direction, they only know the few lines of a part they play indefinitely, which includes petty notions such as how to mix a martini, carve a turkey, or test the purity of cocaine. Like in the iconic recurring scene that sees them walk in the heat of a sunny day on a deserted countryside road, they come from nowhere, and to nowhere they march—alone.
“Cinema is an instrument of poetry, with all that that word can imply of the sense of liberation, of subversion of reality, of the threshold of the marvellous world of the subconscious, of nonconformity with the limited society that surrounds us.” —Luis Buñuel
