To give up the burden of modern society and live a life of solitude in a remote part of the world is certainly an extreme choice, but who—as an artist especially—has never toyed with the idea, and perhaps thought that someone crazy or brave enough could actually do it? Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence always comes to mind as more of a realistic if thin possibility than a whimsical fantasy. That’s where the ambiguity of Liza lies for me. Whereas in other films by Marco Ferreri the surreal element makes itself apparent pretty soon in the story—like in La Grande Bouffe, Dillinger è morto, L’udienza, or La donna scimmia, where hints to the forthcoming descent into the allegorical, the preposterous, the paradoxical are progressively left on the path—Liza starts from an uncommon yet plausible scenario to abruptly switch to big time bananas. Just as we are becoming intrigued by the romantic tale of two outcasts on a desert island and are naturally invited to project our expectations as to how things will evolve, we are plunged into an unfathomable parable of biblical misogynistic proportions where all the rules thus far established and, to an extent, everything we think we know about the characters is upended. But while our first reaction to seeing our bearded hero turn into an arsehole and our frail princess perform canine extravaganzas might put us off, a far deeper emotional process has just been triggered. And wherever that will lead us, it will be some place we might have never visited hadn’t we been teased by Marco Ferreri’s cheeky intuitions. Despite its clunky narrative, its cynical look at humanity—and having messed up Flaiano’s source material—Liza is as clever and challenging as cinema used to be.

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