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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Stuff of Dreams, 1 July 2008
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" unfolds with the absurd logic of a recurrent dream, and since the DVD has been beautifully restored, one is able to dream the dream in vivid colour. Elegantly dressed guests arrive for a dinner party only to have the hostess inform them that they have come on the wrong night; thus, they keep making appointments for dinners that are continually interrupted for one reason or another--all of the reasons being as patently ridiculous as are the characters: a bishop, who arrives at the house and asks to be hired as a gardener, and then relates the story of his macabre childhood; a soldier, who arrives at a restaurant (that has run out of tea and coffee), asks to join the ladies, whom he has never met before, and relates the story of his macabre childhood; a General, who arrives with his platoon a day early at the same house with the same hostess in time for dinner, and then, after the General invites a Private to relate the story of his macabre dream to the hosts and the invited guests (who listen attentively), both General and platoon depart for maneuvers (but not before inviting all the guests to his house for dinner, where even more macabre events unfold.). Thus, the dreams contain dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams within dreams et cetera ad absurdum.
This film is for anyone who has ever had recurrent nightmares of waiting for a bus on the wrong corner; of being about to take a test only to discover that one has studied the wrong subject; of being about give a lecture only to discover that one has left one's notes at home; or of performing on stage with a mouth stuffed with peanut-butter when one's cue is coming up. All the absurd commonplaces that make perfect sense when one is dreaming. And much of the "discreet charm" of the bourgeois characters in this film derives from the fact that one is dreaming their nightmares and not one's own.
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25 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bunuel at his best, 24 Oct 2000
This was the first Bunuel movie I saw and it still stays my favorite. I saw it in the movie theater and by the end 70% of spectators had left. The reason was that they were not prepared for Bunuel (It was in Gorki, Soviet Union, 1986 or 87). I wasn't either but I fell in love with the movie from the very begining. It stupid to try to reveal the plot, because there's none. If you ask me, the plot of this movie is the same as in That Obscure Object of Desire (my second best Bunuel): You can't get what you crave for. For it's not the plot that matters, it's the mood, l'ambiance. And those little things like the story about Brigadier. If you have never seen a Bunuel film, start with this one!
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious, 29 July 2006
Fellini said that he wished to have made a film like The Discreet Charm. It's like a perfectly filmed bad dream, and it is very, very funny. Like all great works of art, there's nothing to compare it to. Except, perhaps, Bunel's Obscure Object of Desire. But that would be greedy.
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