Rating: 
Summary: The endless desire!
Review:
The difference between a caprice and a passion which endures the whole life is the caprice endures longer . This statement belongs to Oscar Wilde and it fits for this film as a ring to finger.
Since two couples decide to go dinner , that simple issue will turn in a bitter nightmare with innovative ideas and distorted state of things .. Reality and illusion blended and linked by superb surrealistic situations all along this journey .
Consider as an endless puzzle joke . The conceptual basis of this original film nevertheless you can feel in his previous film The exterminator angel .
Another masterful jewel of this unique director Luis Buñuel.
Rating:
Summary: Bunuel at his best
Review: A scathing satire that's funny as well as satirical. Bunuel has a varied career, and it was wonderful to see him have sucess later in life with several of his last films. A great film by truly one of the world's great directors.
Rating:
Summary: Viewers Vary On This One
Review: Although Im giving this 5 stars, I must warn you that some viewers are not going to be taken with this film. This is because the film is surreal, absurdist and doesn't follow traditional notions of plot and character development. It resembles a great piece of abstract modern art. If you don't like any of those adjectives, you probably are not going to like this movie. If you do like those adjectives, you probably will love this movie. The plot is pretty much held together by a dinner party which is always trying to come off but sidesteps instead into one surreal, absurdist, right-brain world setup after another. For those who wonder where film has left to go as an art form, this film may answer their question. There is one scene, which I can never forget in here, which reverses the public and private fuctions of eating. I have never been able to get this scene out of my mind!
Rating:
Summary: Elegant, Surreal And Charming.
Review: Among the works of the best directors of the 20th century, the films of Luis Bunuel stand out as some of the most original and provocative. It is especially refreshing to find what an impressive DVD set Criterion put together for the centenery of this, one of the greatest masters of the cinema. "The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie" was Bunuel's most successful movie, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film and remains fresh, entertaining, fascinating, stylish and strong. It is a brilliant collage of surrealism and criticsm, it is at once a movie that has something to say about social realities and a fantasy that plays like a weird dream. It speaks to the realities of social order and the strangeness of life. Bunuel cheerfully goes for the surprisingly absurd, like a priest offering to be a rich couple's gardener (this later goes into a scene where the priest has to absolve the killer of his parents and in Bunuel fashion, after he finishes the prayers he picks up a rifle and shoots the man). The movie is also visually enchanting, Bunuel's shots are seductive in their own way with the way he films rooms, feet, people and events. There are vibrant colors and the dialogue is wonderfully intelligent. And it is never boring, Bunuel takes us through one strange event after the other, never letting the movie slow down for anything. The second disc in this set is a great treat for fans of Bunuel. It contains the brand new, 2000 documentary "A Proposito De Bunuel (Speaking Of Bunuel)." It's a fascinating, rich documentary on the life and work on Bunuel which features clips from all his classics including "Un Chien Andalou" and "Los Olvidados" and it traces his work from France to Mexico, Spain and back to France. It also has some great interviews with people who worked with Bunuel including Mexican star Sylvia Pinal who was Bunuel's favorite movie star in the 60s. The mini-documentary found in the first disc, "The Castaway On The Street Of Providence," made in the 70s by Bunuel friends and the Mexican director Arturo Ripstein (who made "Deep Crimson") is also fascinating and features Bunuel himself talking and his wife Jeanne. This is a great set for any film buff and fan of Bunuel and the surrealist movement. It is fitting that such a great tribute be made for such a great filmmaker.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent DVD transfer of Buñuel's classic film
Review: At long last, one of the surrealist maestro Luis Buñuel's films has finally made it on to the DVD format and it is an excellent production. The film begins with a group of four guests arriving at the home of a couple to have dinner, but the lady of the house says they've arrived a day early. One of the guests suggests going to eat at a local inn he knows. They arrive there to find the inn's owner has died, and his body is in a room. And so begins the constantly frustrating quest to eat, for this group of six bourgeois friends. They are distracted and prevented by the army, the police, poor restaurants, and surreal occurrences. Like one where a red curtain unveils an audience watching them eat on a stage. The most prominent character is Raphael, played superbly by Fernando Rey. He is the ambassador of the Republic of Miranda. He is also a drug smuggler, and is stalked by a terrorist woman. Buñuel also throws in his customary dream-like diversions, like a soldier who tells three ladies in a restaurant an odd story from his childhood.There is also a priest who enters the house of one of the group, and gets the job of being their gardener. He later visits an old dying gardener to give him absolution, and it transpires the dying man requests forgiveness for killing the priest's parents. The priest tells God to forgive him, then promptly shoots him with a shotgun. The ambassador Raphael continually has his country insulted. A soldier keeps insulting Miranda, so Raphael shoots him. Just when you think the group will never get to dine, they begin, and are interrupted by a gun toting group of villains. There is then a memorable shot of Raphael cowering under the table finally eating a piece of meat. But is it all a dream? And is the end sequence (which is shown several times throughout the film) a dream? One will never know. It is a majestic and brilliantly acted masterpiece. The film won an Oscar for best foreign film. The two DVDs are superb. On disc one we get the film, and the image is a beautiful new widescreen high-definition transfer. The film has never looked better. The sound is in mono. The menus have the famous scene of the group of people walking down the country road, and music from the film playing. Also on disc one is a documentary entitled El Naufrago de la Calle de Providencia from 1970, which visits Buñuel's house, where the maestro shows us his love of making cocktails. There is also the trailer. On disc two there is another documentary, A Proposito de Buñuel, from 2000. This runs for 98 minutes and is excellent. It covers Buñuel's life from the early days of Un Chien Andalou and the surrealist movement, right through to his last film. There are many interviews with Buñuel's friends, who speak fondly of him. It really is a fascinating documentary about the life and career of Luis Buñuel. The two documentaries are worth the price on their own. There is also Buñuel's filmography on disc two. This is an impressive package from Criterion. Hopefully Buñuel's other films will receive the same treatment soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Has Not Aged Well
Review: Beginning in the mid-1950s and extending through the 70s, European film makers produced a large number of largely unintelligible films consisting of a series of dream-like symbolic scenes designed to appeal to self-styled intellectuals, which they then dumped on the American market with great success. Examples include "Hiroshima Mon Amor," "Last Year at Marienbad," and everything by Fellini and Bergman. As evidenced by the other reviews on this page, these films still have their adherents, but more down-to-earth viewers are likely to be left feeling that these "artistic" efforts are simply pretentious wastes of time. This particular film is one of the better ones of its type, although it does present a good deal of gratuitous violence and lasts 30 minutes too long. Those who do enjoy it should try to obtain a copy of "L'Age d'Or" (1930), a collaboration between Bunuel and Salvador Dali which was immediately placed on the Catholic Church's Index and all but one copy of which was destroyed. In describing that effort, Bunuel said, "The sexual instinct and the sense of death form the substance of the film. It is a romantic film performed with full surrealistic frenzy." This description is equally applicable to "Discreet Charm," leaving the viewer questioning whether Bunuel, or surrealism, progressed during the 42-year interim or thereafter.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest
Review: Bunuel followed nobody (and, unfortunately, nobody follows Bunuel, maybe nobody can). I've seen this movie more times than I can count. Why? Because it is the perfect reminder that there's a huge universe of possibilities in filmmaking and storytelling beyond the narrow financial constraints of Hollywood. Bunuel taught me, first of all, that our everyday lives are exceedingly narrow, and that one doesn't need to invoke flaming airborne automobiles and exploding cities to get into extraordinary, unsettling situations. Bunuel achieves these through the most subtle and economical means, showing us how little one needs to stray from the usual for most of us to get rattled. On a second thought though, after I saw my first Bunuel movie ('The Exterminating Angel') I was so stunned that I couldn't see a Hollywood movie for many months afterwards (they all seemed created for and by morons). So if you enjoy your Hollywood fare, maybe better skip Bunuel...
Rating:
Summary: Masterful tales of charm and horror
Review: Bunuel's handling of narrative is nothing short of masterful in this film. The work's structure is akin to a collection of interconnected short stories - stories that have important ties with Poe's more satirical writings. Each tale offers either a variation on one or more of the film's main characters, or an episode linked in one way or another to the events that surround it. These tales are interesting enough when considered individually, but they gain further levels of meaning if we read them in parallel with the whole work. The film is at once literary and extremely cinematic: the thematic, 'writerly' depth is enhanced by remarkable visual coherence; the cool, precise style hides constant subversion and images range from the brutally shocking to the lyrical. It is customary but somewhat erroneous to say that this work goes back-and-forth between dreams and 'reality' - Bunuel blurs the line between them until differenciation becomes close to impossible. This is a major achievement from one of the supreme masters of the fantastic art.
Rating: 
Summary: Dinner is Served
Review: Director Luis Bunuel is often described as a surrealist, but the word misapplied in reference to his later works; rather than present the viewer with an odd visual display, he prefers to first create a plausible reality and then progressively undercut it with an increasingly implausible series of events. Such is the case with the Academy Award-winning THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, which begins with four friends who arrive at their hosts' home only to discover they have arrived on the wrong night--a plausible situation. But before the film has run its course, Bunuel unravels his tale of a meal that never quite happens in the most unexpected ways imaginable. The film works on several levels, mocking social conventions, the church, and eventually spilling its action into a series of overlapping nightmares in which various attempts to dine are frustrated by everything from the corpse of a restaurant manager in a nearby room to military manouvers. On one memorable occasion, the friends are invited to dine and are seated around an elegant table--when a curtain suddenly rises behind them and reveals them to be seated on a stage before a hostile audience! The cast (which features Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Paul Frankeur, Bulle Ogier, Stephane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel as the constantly frustrated diners) plays with considerable aplomb, performing the most irrational scenes with a magnificent realism. When combined with Bunuel's absurdist story, the result is a disquieting yet often very funny discourse on frustrated appetites both real and imagined, and with many layers of incidental meaning along the way. The DVD package is very nice, with the film in near-pristine condition and a host of interesting and often amusing extras, and Bunuel fans will consider it more than worth the rather hefty price-tag attached. But a word of caution to the uninitiated: Bunuel is not for those who seek a tidy plot line with clear-cut meanings. If you are not already a fan, you should probably begin with his equally complex but somewhat more accessible and considerably more subtle BELLE DE JOUR before diving off into DISCREET CHARM. --GFT (Amazon reviewer)--
Rating:
Summary: Great Movie/Great DVD!
Review: First of all, Luis Bunuel is one of the giants of the movies. Bunuel's one of the most innovative, creative, influential artists in the history of the movies, also one of the greatest artists of this century as well. His movies have influenced so many filmmakers since including Hitchcock, Kubrick, Truffaut, Godard, Scorsese, Tarantino, and many more. This movie "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is definitely one of his very best, as well as one of the greatest movies ever made. It's movie that is just about as close to perfection as movies can get. It's beautifully shot, great performances, great dialogue, great editing, directing, and everything else is great. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that this movie was going to be released on DVD by Criterion to celebrate Bunuel's 100th Anniversary. However, when I got the DVD by Criterion, it was great. It looks more beautiful than ever, and sounds great too. Also, they included the theatrical trailer,a filmography, a short featurette on Bunuel, and a great documentary on the life and career of Bunuel which really makes this DVD a must have for admirers of Bunuel or of great movies. I hope more of Bunuel's movies will make their way on DVD soon. There are so many of Bunuel's movies that are worthy of DVD for example, "Los Olvidados", "Tristana", "Viridiana", "Nazarin" "The Exterminating Angel", "Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz", "That Obscure Object of Desire", "Belle de Jour", "L'Age D'our", "Un Chien Andalou", etc.
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