ByBrett Snyder
Confinement is a recurrent narrative configuration in the films of Luis Buñuel; whether it's a physical, institutional, or hierarchal trapping, the preeminent cynic loves to smother and torture his characters to expose some of their most basic and tragic malfunctions as human beings. In "The Exterminating Angel" (1962), a group of bourgeois guests arrive at a dinner party (twice, even) and engage in a ritualistic fine dining experience; afterwards, however, an enigmatic force compels them all to stay put for days and weeks. Ten years later, in "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), Buñuel teases a succession of similar bourgeois dinner gatherings, but never allows the ritual to come into fruition. It's a work of exploitative abstraction that uses a similar thematic template as Exterminating Angel, but takes the sociopolitical-satire elements further into a realm of Surrealist obscurity. In "Discreet Charm", instead of trapping his privileged fraternity in a vacuum of regressive civility à la "Exterminating Angel", Buñuel denies his vain subjects of their privileges altogether. Both films effectively expose the sophomoric tendencies of bourgeois elitists, but in "Discreet Charm", their confining plague is not one of extermination, but rather interruption.
The story goes like this: a group of six bourgeois friends continually attempt to enjoy a meal together, only to be persistently interrupted by some divergence related to sex, dreams, or death. The film also contains an amassment of violations which serve to expose the corruption and superficiality of the upper class. Within the group, there are two married couples: Alice & Henri Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel), and Simone & M. Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig, Paul Frankeur); there's also Simone Thévenot's younger sister Florence (Bulle Ogier), and Don Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey), a mutual friend and the ambassador of Miranda (a fictional country in South America). As the story unfolds, we learn that Madame Thévenot is having an affair with the ambassador, while he's also involved in drug trafficking with Mr. Sénéchal and Mr. Thévenot. It should be noted that the film never explicitly states it's setting, but it's so visually suggestive of France (specifically Paris) that most critics agree on its locale.
Like many Buñuel films, the narrative is curiously and uncompromisingly transcendent; to the novice viewer, this could be foolishly written off as incoherence. The perception of objective and glossy reality early on eventually gives way to dark, Oedipal Surrealism, with seemingly no narrative or causal device to signal the transformation. It's purely episodic -- a collection of moments, memories and dreams from a wide array of cultural sources, all strung together to resemble a plot. Increasingly irrational scenarios arise which serve to upset any and all narrative consistency, besides the loosely episodic structuring; however, the anti-narration isn't foregrounded to the extent of, say, "The Phantom of Liberty", a film that Buñuel went on to make two years after "Discreet Charm". Though "Phantom" has its share of cynical overtones regarding the middle-to-upper class, the film plays as a more of an exploration on life's chance encounters and the stream of consciousness. After all, Buñuel had already thrown down the gauntlet on the bourgeoisie with films such as "The Exterminating Angel", "Discreet Charm", "L'Age D'or" (1930), and even "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), a prototypical Surrealist film that effectively shocked audiences out of their bourgeois complacencies.
Despite the narrative meandering and seemingly random dream-within-dream bits, there is a coherent dialogue that underlies all the obscurity and creates a connective tissue for the film. "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" can be read as a condemnation and dehumanization of the French bourgeoisie. Like Jean Renoir's controversial masterpiece "The Rules of the Game" (1939), it's a snarky satire that methodically exposes the superficiality and infantilism of a group of social elites. Buñuel never plays by the rules, and he never tells us explicitly what's on his mind; his cynical, sardonic and oftentimes subversive attitude runs parallel to his unconventional and non-conformist approach to filmmaking. In the case of "Discreet Charm", the end result is a marriage of innovation and irreverence.
TRAPPED IN PURGATORY
Though "Discreet Charm" doesn't subscribe to conventional notions of narrative structuring, Buñuel nevertheless creates something of a three-act structure by which the film loosely adheres to. On three different occasions, he willfully diverts from the main narrative to show all of his bourgeois guests trudging down a desolate country road that, by assumption, leads to nowhere. What's interesting (and possibly most telling) about these scenes is that they seem to be strategically placed at certain points over the course of the film to offset the main narrative. From this perspective, then, one could consider that these three acts of the film come out to be approximately the same length of time when divided by the three narrative markers, and each act contains its own mini-narratives and oedipal offshoots.
Many of the bizarre happenings in the latter half of the film come across as random and unnatural, but these three road scenes seem more methodical and apparent of Buñuel's exploitation of his bourgeois characters. And though none of these three scenes are shot in the exact same way, all of them utilize numerous wide angles to create a sense of isolation and hopelessness. It's a metaphoric representation of the hollowness and futility of their lives as they laboriously (yet willfully) travel through a state of purgatory-limbo. The characters' inferred indifference in these scenes is reflective of their obliviousness to it all; they're stuck in a delusional reality, which is why these scenes appear to operate out of context from the main narrative. The characters walk on a path of hopelessness, unable to reach the truth of their masked fraudulency. This is a major thesis by which the film is predicated on, so it should come as no surprise that Buñuel decided to end the film with his characters confined in this futile state of existence.
Another way in which the three incongruous country road-abyss sequences fit into the grand scheme of Buñuel's obscured narrative is that they're essentially tiny vignettes within a larger framework. Buñuel builds a puzzle box of a film, cluttering the narrative with stories within stories and dreams within dreams. His narrative omissions, such as the Sénéchals' sex scene, the soldier's train dream, and the woman's explanation for hating Jesus, serve to counterbalance the film's emphasis on episodic repetition; this, coupled with the film's propensity towards randomly cutting in and out of abstruse dreams, eliminates narrative complacency and makes it impossible to predict what will happen next.
As in most Buñuel films, there are purposely pieces of the puzzle left unmanufactured (such as the narrative omissions), because after all, life is not always easily understood; there are curiosities, mysteries, irrationalities, and all kinds of other things outside of the realm of understanding, and Buñuel joyfully plays with these ambiguities in his films. On several occasions, he cuts to one of the main characters waking from sleep, startled by the chilling reality of a dream experience. With nothing to signify the abrupt shifts between reality and dreamscape, it becomes virtually impossible to tell when a character is dreaming or experiencing Buñuel's twisted sense of reality. Furthermore, the dream sequences get deeper as the film progresses, to the point where one person's dream is actually a dream of another person's - a dream within a dream.
The ritualistic meal is the preferred method of assembly for a group of superficial human beings who value ceremonial smugness over genuine human feeling and interaction. These people do dinners and luncheons so they can assert a false sense of eloquence; it's a way for them to share colloquial views on politics and government. They're all phonies, too, as Buñuel clarifies; they're actually drug dealers and adulterous sinners, but the ritualistic formality of a grandiose bourgeois dinner allows them to put on a false front and momentarily ignore their inherent similarities with the lower classes.
The first dinner attempt is thwarted because of an honest misunderstanding of the dinner date itself; to rectify the inconvenience, the group decides to go to a restaurant instead. However, once they arrive and sit down, they're interrupted from their critiquing of the menu to notice that in the next room, the recently deceased owner of the restaurant is waiting to be taken to a funeral parlor. The bourgeois guests are startled and appalled, but the employees of the restaurant encourage them to stay and enjoy their meals, because after all, life and business must go on. The group leaves not because of a feeling of guilt, sympathy or compassion, but because of the inconvenience that it causes them. They have no comprehension of the essentiality of work that others recognize as a fact of life and survival.
The rest of the luncheons and dinners are interrupted in similarly bizarre ways, and each time something new is exposed about the guests' petty behaviors and primitive displays of humanity that they hide under their attuned manners. One luncheon is called off because the two hosts, Alice and Henri Sénéchal, are so caught up in foreplay that they sneak out for an impromptu sexual rendezvous outside in the garden. This goes on while the guests have already arrived at their house and are waiting to be greeted. But the two hosts agree that it would be too loud to have sex in the house while there are guests present, so they decide that the most reasonable solution is to sneak out, abandon their guests and have sex behind some bushes. Needless to say, it would be much more practical and convenient if they could just simply control their lustful cravings, but a suppression of such impulses would be revealing that they, in fact, possess such shallow impulses.
In one dream, the bourgeois guests arrive at a dinner party that's interrupted by an opening of curtains -- a reveal that finds the group on a stage being chaffed by an audience; and let there be no mistake, the audience might as well be us. Most of the guests just simply get up and leave the stage, but Henri Sénéchal stays put, and in an obvious state of despair, he's unable to remember his "lines". This reinforces the idea that the guests are merely actors, or altering their appearances and manners to fit the mold of proper social elite.
In a dream linked directly with the former dream, Rafael is insulted by the dinner party's host, an army colonel who can't help but comment on Miranda's notorious culture of corruption and violence. Rafael refutes the colonel's claims and makes attempts at his own insults before pulling out a gun and shooting the army colonel until he's dead. But he doesn't kill the man for making faulty accusations - he kills him for breaking a code of bourgeois chivalry that may or may not have been evident. Rafael's hypocrisy is further exposed by his killing of the colonel, but this is also the same man who smuggles illegal drugs -- and at the same time, condemns drug use over opulent gatherings; his hypocrisy shouldn't really be up for debate in the first place.
Despite Buñuel's sardonic wit and overall mocking tone, "Discreet Charm" tends to take on distressing undertones of morbidity and the metaphysical. This is somewhat foreshadowed in the opening credits sequence, as the camera tracks through a series of windy roads and streets from inside a car's interior at nighttime; the sequence seems slightly incongruous at first, setting a dark tone early only to give way to a series of glossy bourgeois dinner scenes. Buñuel's intentions are more apparent as the film progresses, however, with the consideration that this sequence takes on certain characteristics of the "lost highway" offshoots and also the metaphysical mini-narratives. Things eventually turn dark and ominous, but strictly from a narrative perspective; the incongruously satirical undercurrents and Buñuel's biting wit never allow viewers to get overly comfortable or complacent with the material.
Interpreted as a state of purgatory for the bourgeois characters, the film is an episodic exercise in imprisonment and torture. The characters are all doomed to repeat the same failed meal scenario over and over again until they realize the emptiness of their existence. The phantasmal presence of death looms all around them, such as in the dinner party stage show, where they are compelled to invite a ghost to join their table. A soldier curiously shows up in two different scenarios (once during a failed coffee rendezvous, and once during a dinner-turned-military intervention) and is compelled to share seemingly random stories about his deceased mother; one of these stories (from the coffee scenario) is based off of his memory, in which he's given instructions from his mother to murder his father; the other story comes during a dinner party that's interrupted by a military intervention, in which he shares a dream about meeting several phantoms that make sly implications that's he's just as dead as they are.
What's most ironic is that despite all of the luncheon and dinner failings carrying the threat of exposure and punishment of bourgeois sins, there are ultimately no repercussions of their punishment; nothing is charged against the bourgeois friends, and they don't admit to anything. They're doomed to suffer the making of their own fate, but they're oblivious to it all. It reflects the film's ability to stage all of these absurd, elaborately staged scenarios in which a climax is always elusive, and the only consistency is the incongruity of the scenarios and characters' behaviors.
The military shows up in one scene and we hear what sounds like a battle erupting not far outside the home of the Sénéchals, but the colonel stresses to the bourgeois guests that they're just on "maneuvers". The last dinner rendezvous is interrupted by a raid perpetrated by a rival drug gang, resulting in an execution-style shooting of all but one of the dinner guests (a symbolic execution for their crimes against human decency, perhaps). Rafael manages to sneak under the dinner table and hide from his would-be executioners, but he foolishly compromises his position and exposes himself by greedily reaching up to the table for a piece of lamb. Again, the implication here is that they are makers of their own fate. But before the scene ends and the harsh reality of their demise sinks in, Rafael wakes up and we learn that this last sequence was just a dream (more anti-climax). More irony ensues when Rafael gets out of bed and heads to the refrigerator for a late night snack, proving that he's oblivious to his own transgressions (this bit is also suggestive that the entire film could have merely been a starving man's dream). In a way, it's as if Buñuel is saying once and for all that, with these people, there's just no hope.
Another staple of criticism in Buñuel's oeuvre is religion, and he doesn't shy away from it here, though it does take a back seat to bourgeoisie denunciation for much of the film. The character of Monsignor Dufour (Julien Bertheau) shows up at the Sénéchal homestead on the day of the second failed meal (the luncheon that was postponed due to garden coitus). Right after Rafael and Co. abruptly escape the premises fearing a police raid (the Sénéchals' maid sparked Rafael's paranoia by informing him that she just saw Henri and Alice sneaking out of their bedroom window, not aware that they were just going to have sex in the bushes) the Monsignor curiously shows up at this most opportune time; though he's all dressed up in a priest's outfit, he comes seeking the gardening job that recently opened after the Sénéchals fired their former employee. He retreats to the gardener's shed and is intent on getting out of his priest's uniform and into the tacky gardener's outfit; he relishes the appearance, much like how the bourgeois dinner friends relish their own upscale appearances. Alice and Henri come back in from their mid-day sexual rendezvous and greet the Monsignor, who makes them aware of his profession (though he's now dressed as a gardener). But because the Sénéchals like to live under the false assumption that appearances must be genuine and are never deceiving, they rebuke the Monsignor, unable to accept that a priest would ever pose as a commoner. When he leaves and returns wearing his original priest's uniform, they resolutely approve of him.
It's not immediately understood what possesses the Monsignor to seek out and embrace his job as gardener; in fact, unlike most of the bourgeois dinner guests, it turns out that there is some semblance of character arc with the Monsignor. The Sénéchals kowtow to him upon their realization that he is, in fact, a priest; they treat him with a sense of dignity, inviting him to dinner with them and such. But the Monsignor also panders to his bourgeois employers, all while asserting his perceived superiority over the poor and those most in need of guidance.
Late in the film, a hapless peasant woman comes to see the Monsignor at the Sénéchal residence as he's finishing his gardening duties for the day and preparing to join the dinner guests for another soon-to-be-failed meal. She asks the Monsignor to perform last rites on a dying man, who turns out to be a former gardener that just lost his job. He fulfills her request because it's his duty, but not out of passion or respect; he's quite dismissive and uninterested in the man and treats the process with a dull, banal ineptness of spirit. The Monsignor fails to realize that the dying man is the one whom he has replaced at the Sénéchal residence. And then a more deeper connection is established when the dying man professes to killing his former employees years ago; as it turns out, these same employees were also the Monsignor's parents. The priest grants the dying man forgiveness and gives him absolution. He fulfills his duties and then proceeds to pick up a shotgun and, without hesitation, kills the man -- an act of vengeance most petty and futile because, well, the poor guy was already on his deathbed anyway. Just like his bourgeois employers, the Monsignor says one thing but does another. He's a sinner posing as a noble priest, just as his employers are sinners posing as noble social elites. He comes to emulate the murderous gardener both in vocation and in revenge.
CONCLUSION
Buñuel's irreverence towards both religion and the bourgeoisie is a full-scale attack on the corrupt underbelly of high society. His condemnation of their social apparatus is designed solely as an incendiary satire of the cheap, contemptible pretensions and delusions they possess. Just like in the faux-dinner party-turned-stage show sequence, he finds joy in the mockery of their petty infantilism, and he wants his audience to savor in the biting impudence as well. The discreet charm that Buñuel is in search of encapsulates the hypocrisies and defects that the bourgeois clowns attempt to suppress. He confines his characters within their own sophomoric existence, exploiting those within the frame and appalling the viewers whom his characters reflect in real life. His absurdist machinations are like little repetitive gags that he plays on his hapless victims, pricking and prodding at them until they react. But these people are not innocent, and Buñuel's cruelty is more of an exposé than an act of inhumanity. All of the greed, hunger, lust and corruption that the social elite attempt to deflect onto the slavish service class is deflected by Buñuel and subsequently branded onto the social elites, proving that the only real difference between the classes is a delusional sense of privilege, purity and inviolability. By the end, the bourgeoisie's deprivation of ritualistic smugness is the ultimate indictment of their fraudulent behavior and false dignity.
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" presents a series of episodic incongruities - a fitting blueprint that paradoxically works when dealing with a ritualistic, discordant bourgeois fraternity. It's an exploitation film masked behind a superficially formal glaze, where the corrupt bourgeoisie are like Vaudeville-esque performers, subject to mockery and condemnation by an audience of oppressed proletariats. The final shot of the film sees the meal-deprived social elites walking through a desolate valley, far removed from civilization and lacking a destination; in Buñuel's universe, this isn't just a metaphor, but a fully realized purgatorial abyss for some of society's most despicable patrons.
