Synopsis
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, 1972) is Luis Bunuel's surrealist satire, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Six well-heeled friends keep sitting down to dinner and never get to eat — the date is wrong, the restaurant has run out of everything, or, mid-meal, they realize they're on a stage in front of an audience.
Bunuel spins a simple wish for a meal into an endless run of interruptions where dreams and waking life swap places with no warning. Fernando Rey plays an ambassador running cocaine on the side, surrounded by Delphine Seyrig, Stephane Audran, Bulle Ogier and Michel Piccoli, all impeccably polite even as logic collapses around them. One episode dissolves into a character's dream, and another sleeper surfaces inside that.
This is late-period Bunuel at full strength: an icy joke aimed at a class that has perfected its manners and forgotten how to live. The film took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and sits among the high points of European surrealism. It rewards viewers who like a cinematic puzzle and dry, absurdist humor over a straight plot. Stream The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) online on iFILM.
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