Film review

  • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie

    Luis Buñuel (1972)

    In Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) the well-heeled guests at a dinner party find that leaving it is easier said than done.  Ten years on, the principals in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie have virtually the opposite problem:  their attempts to eat and drink are repeatedly thwarted.  This surrealist comedy, the most enjoyable Buñuel film that I know, is often, and reasonably, described as playful.  The confounding narrative – the director wrote the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière – sees Buñuel poking fun at his audience as well as at the six characters in search of a square meal.

    Five of the six are French:  Alice and Henri Sénéchal (Stéphane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel); their friends, Simone and François Thévenot (Delphine Seyrig and Paul Frankeur); Simone’s sister, Florence (Bulle Ogier).  The exception is Rafael de Acosta (Fernando Rey), the ambassador to France of a fictional South American country called Miranda.  At the Mirandan Embassy in Paris, Acosta meets with François, who’s some kind of colleague, and Henri, some kind of businessman, to discuss the money to be made through a cocaine deal in which they’re all involved.  In the street outside a young woman (Maria Gabriella Maione) is selling clockwork animal toys.  Acosta gets out a gun; he shoots, hits and stops dead one of the toys, explaining that the young woman belongs to a Maoist terrorist group ‘that’s been after me for years’.  The film’s soigné leading ladies don’t work.  Alice, in whose house and garden much of the action takes place, relies mostly on servants to run the place.  Florence, according to her sister, tends to get too drunk to do much else.

    The first two of the numerous aborted dinners come in quick succession.  The Thévenots and Acosta arrive at the Sénéchals’ home, only to be told by Alice that she was expecting them the following evening.  Her husband isn’t around but the other five head for a nearby inn.  Although the entrance is locked, a waitress who eventually responds to knocking on the door assures the group the restaurant isn’t closed.  Soon after taking their seats at a table, they hear wailing from an adjoining room and get up to investigate.  They discover a vigil being held beside the corpse of the innkeeper, who died a few hours previously.  The would-be diners make a hasty exit.  By the time that Alice, Simone and Florence meet at a teahouse, later in the film, refreshments are in comically short supply.  A waiter (Bernard Musson) politely informs the women that the place has run out of tea, coffee and milk and doesn’t serve cognac.  He can offer them water, though.

    Attempts to have sex are liable to be interrupted too, if not always stymied.  Due to welcome the other four to lunch, a few days after the dinner that never was, Alice and Henri are in the bedroom when their guests arrive.  Ravenously determined to make love, the couple climb out of the window and down the side of the house to avoid being seen, and head for a well-concealed part of the garden.  They do the business there at the expense of the lunch they’re meant to be hosting:  by the time they return, the others are gone, panicked that Henri and Alice have disappeared in order to avoid an impending arrest for drugs trafficking.  Other prospective sexual encounters are stillborn.  Simone is having an affair with Acosta and leaves the teahouse for his apartment.  They’re about to go to bed together when François arrives unexpectedly.  Simone makes her excuses to Acosta and leaves with her unquestioning husband.  When the terrorist girl turns up to kill him, Acosta quickly puts her in her place; when she refuses his sexual advances, the ambassador calls his men to take her away.

    Buñuel’s view of formal dining as essential bourgeois performance is eventually explicit in a sequence where the characters are disconcerted to find themselves seated at table on a theatre stage, watched by a large, somewhat fidgety audience.  When this is revealed to be a dream sequence – one of several in the course of the narrative – it has the effect of linking impatience in the theatre stalls with what Buñuel suspects may be  his audience’s fellow feeling.  I had seen and liked The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie twice before – in the 1970s and again around twenty years ago.  I knew there were dream sections yet the film moves so smoothly (the editor was Hélène Piemiannikov) that, even on this third viewing, I kept falling for Buñuel’s legerdemain – believing that what I was seeing was actually happening until the next cut proved otherwise.  The viewer is thus made repeatedly aware of their fundamental expectations of a narrative; so too the listener, through the use of another interruptive device.  With the dialogue on the point of revealing something that could be important to the story, it’s sometimes drowned out by the (deliberately too loud) noise of traffic outside or an aircraft passing overhead.  (The dialogue faces no competition from music, which is almost conspicuous by its absence.)

    The ensemble acting is flawless:  the ludicrous elegance – gestural, vocal and sartorial – of Stéphane Audran and Delphine Seyrig; Bulle Ogier’s relative lack of poise which, in the circumstances, verges on subversive; Jean-Pierre Cassel’s effortless comic flair, most beautifully illustrated when Henri discreetly removes a piece of hay from Alice’s hair after the couple’s roll in it and return to their house; Paul Frankeur’s uneasy bonhomie; Fernando Rey’s richly ambiguous suavity.  In the smaller parts, there are fine contributions from, among others, Milena Vukotic, as the Sénéchals’ maid; from Christian Balthauss, as a sincerely melancholy young soldier who regales the main characters with tales of his tragic past; and, especially, from Julien Bertheau, as Monsieur Dufour.  When Alice and Henri first see Dufour on their premises, dressed like a labourer, they brusquely evict him; when he promptly returns in ecclesiastical vestments and explains he’s the bishop of their diocese, it’s a different matter.  The Sénéchals even agree to his request to work as their gardener.  (‘The church has changed, you know.  You’ve heard of worker priests? The same goes for bishops …’)  In due course, Dufour not only reveals a dark backstory but takes lethal revenge on the man who, many years ago, killed his parents – as far as one can tell, this part isn’t a dream.  Whether in gardening togs or bishop’s robes, Julien Bertheau brings to his role a disturbing, mad-eyed gravitas.

    At the 1973 Academy Awards The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was named Best Foreign Language Film, landing Buñuel his only Oscar.  While that success is evidence that the film was more palatable to conventional tastes than its predecessors, Buñuel’s reduced aggression isn’t a weakness.  He’s still using surrealism here as a satirical weapon, still skewering the middle classes and the attitudes they represent.  Yet he deploys a different, more relaxed, you might even say classier style – one that may well reflect his own advancing years (he was in his early seventies at the time) and grimly amused recognition that the bourgeoisie will survive him (he died, as old as the century, in 1983).  The most famous image in the film (which was photographed by Edmond Richard) shows, three times, the six main characters walking together down an otherwise deserted country road.  Their progress seems aimless but they remain inanely undaunted.  In the final shot, there’s still a spring in their step.  They’ll carry on regardless.

    31 May 2023

  • Three Colours: Red

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Trois couleurs: Rouge, Trzy kolory: Czerwony

    Krzysztof Kieślowski (1994)

    Three Colours: Red is the most complicated and compelling part of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s trilogy.  Like Blue and White, it’s co-written by Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz (and scored by Zbigniew Preisner though the music is less imposing in Red than in the first two films).  Expanses or hints of the title colour are variously in evidence:  on a billboard advertisement, as background to the face of the film’s commercial-model heroine, Valentine Dussaut; in décor and clothes; as a trio of cherries on a fruit machine; as blood on Valentine’s hand when she tends an injured animal.  According to the trilogy’s tricolour scheme, the corresponding French Revolutionary watchword here is fraternité and Kieślowski explores interesting aspects of the concept.  Red’s other principal character is Joseph Kern, a retired judge, whose former line of work illustrates in a particularly explicit way how the actions of one person affect the lives of others.  In retirement Kern lives alone.  The closest he gets to brotherhood is eavesdropping on his neighbours’ telephone conversations.

    Modelling is a part-time job for Valentine (Irène Jacob), who’s also a university student in Geneva, where Red takes place.  Her boyfriend, Michel, is currently working in London; whenever they speak on the phone, he demands assurances that Valentine is alone.  She makes the acquaintance of Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant) after knocking down his dog while driving back from a photo shoot.  Rita, a German Shepherd, is unaccompanied at the time but has an address printed on her collar.  When Valentine tracks him down, Kern confirms he is Rita’s owner and that she ran away the previous day; he shows no interest in having the dog back and Valentine, after seeing to her veterinary care, continues to look after Rita until a subsequent visit to Kern’s house.  It’s on that visit that Valentine catches Kern listening in on a phone conversation between a male neighbour and the latter’s (male) lover.   Valentine takes Kern to task; he dares her to report him to the neighbour.  (In trying to do so, she discovers the neighbour’s daughter is also earwigging, on a phone extension.)  Soon afterwards, Kern volunteers a written public confession to his spying activities.  His statement results in a class-action lawsuit.

    The possessive Michel is unseen throughout but another young man, Auguste Bruner (Jean-Pierre Lorit), is the third important character in the story.  He has few actual interactions with the two protagonists but there are plenty of connections between him and them.  Auguste lives in the same street as Valentine.  He’s studying – preparing for exams to qualify as a judge.  He’s a dog owner.  He’s jealous of his girlfriend, Karin (Frédérique Feder).  Her unusual occupation is providing, as a phone service, ‘personalised weather forecasts’; although he doesn’t set foot outside his house until required to appear in court, Kern regularly calls Karin’s number.  The ex-judge suspects another neighbour of drug trafficking; on his way home one night, Auguste drops a textbook which falls open at a chapter on drug trafficking; when he passes his judge exams, Auguste credits his success to this lucky chance.  Unlike Valentine, Karin is unfaithful to her boyfriend.  The spying lawsuit is the first case over which newly-qualified Auguste presides; Karin is there for the occasion but Kern notices her flirting with another man.  In time, Auguste grows so desperately suspicious that he scales the outside of Karin’s apartment block to see what she’s up to.  He discovers her having sex with someone else.

    Although the billboard ad featuring Valentine’s face is for chewing gum, the photographer on the shoot (Samuel Le Bihan) suggests that her hair should be wet and her expression sad.  In the climax to the story, his advice comes to seem prescient – in marked contrast to Karin’s weather forecasts.  Planning to join Michel in England, Valentine is nervous of flying.  Kern, with whom she has developed a persisting, tentative friendship, suggests that she take the ferry instead, Karin having assured him that the weather on the Channel is set fair for the week ahead.  Karin tells Kern she’ll also be sailing in the area then, on a yacht, presumably with her new boyfriend.  We watch Auguste and, moments later, Valentine arriving on the ferry; each asks directions to their seat.  We next see Kern, grim-faced, watching a television news report:  in stormy weather, the ferry has sunk and very many passengers are missing – ditto ‘two people aboard a yacht’.

    By this stage of Red, Kern’s relationship to the other principals is confounding.  Auguste can’t actually be Kern’s younger self but he’s a kind of alter ego.  When Valentine asks Kern if he has ever loved, he tells her just once, as a young man.  The love affair turned sour when he witnessed his sweetheart having sex with a man called Hugo Holbling; Kern nevertheless followed the girl to England, where she died in an accident.  (Years later, Kern was asked to try the case of the same Hugo Holbling, who was found guilty.  It was after this that Kern took early retirement.)  As for Valentine, Kern tells her he’s dreamed of her as a fifty-year-old, living happily with the man she loves.  Explaining that he himself never loved again because ‘I stopped believing’, Kern muses to Valentine, ‘Maybe I never met the woman … maybe you’re the woman I never met’.

    Even though it’s soon clear that Red isn’t interested in realistic probability, it takes time to adjust to this regarding Rita.  When Valentine has carried the bleeding, whimpering dog from the road into her car, the priority is obviously to get her to a vet.  Instead, Valentine, after looking at Rita’s collar, consults a street map, drives to Kern’s house, leaves the dog in the car, rings a doorbell, gets no answer, wanders about a bit, sees Kern sitting inside, enters a door that happens to be open, and has a conversation with him.  After all that, she drives to a vet, apparently unconcerned by the passage of time since the accident.  She’s right to be unconcerned, though.  The vet sees to the dog’s wounds before announcing that Rita is pregnant.  From this point on, that’s the medical condition that matters (Rita’s injury disappears instantly).   I was exasperated again when Valentine took the dog for a walk and let her off the lead with the words, ‘But don’t run away’:  guess what happens next.  After a brief detour into a church service, Rita heads back to Kern’s, which is where she then stays.  She has her pups, one of which Kern will give to Valentine when she returns from England … Rita fares better eventually than Auguste’s dog.  Returning to his apartment after catching Karin in flagrante delicto, Auguste punches the animal when it gets on his bed to snuggle up.  Later, he ties it to a lamppost and walks away but they’re back together when he boards the ferry.  By the end of Red, it was the symbolic import of what happens with the dogs that I couldn’t get my head round.

    As I came out of Red at BFI, another member of the audience – a pleasant, puzzled man, probably about my age (sixty-seven) – asked me if I’d understood it all.  That was easy to answer:  no.  (I couldn’t fathom at all the significance of a subplot involving Marc (Leo Ramseyer), Valentine’s brother who turns out to be her half-brother.)  The man seemed keen to know what I thought I did understand, though, about the strange connections between the main characters.  I muttered a few inarticulate words in an effort to oblige but didn’t get on to different connections that had struck me a few times as I watched Red and have stuck with me since – the connections between Kern and Kieślowski and God.  Kern seems sure that his dreams give him foreknowledge of Valentine’s future life.  Despite consulting a weather forecaster, he’s filled with foreboding when, just before Valentine leaves for England, a violent storm causes flooding in the building where she has just appeared in a fashion show, attended by Kern.  He doesn’t, however, see fit to warn Valentine off the impending sea voyage:  it’s as if he understands that her fate is predetermined.  For his part, Kieślowski seems at pains to stress that, within the universe of their films, directors are omnipotent and capricious.  In the closing scene of Red, Kern watches another TV news report about the ferry disaster.  The reporter’s voice confirms that, of the several hundred passengers on board, only seven have survived, unharmed; there’s footage of them arriving back on dry land.  They are Julie, then Olivier, from Three Colours: Blue; Karol, then Dominique, from Three Colours: White; last but not least, Valentine and Auguste (minus dog), who are now shown together.  (The only escapee we don’t see is an English barman on the ship.)  Kern watches the television screen with relief and approval.

    Kieślowski’s deliverance of these individuals is touching (albeit Dominique is an undeserving survivor) for two reasons.   First, it somehow expresses how a film-maker, especially a writer-director, brings to life on screen people who otherwise would not exist.  Second, it’s hard in retrospect not to contrast this select band’s good fortune with the fate in reality of several of those involved in the making of Three Colours.  A few months after Red’s Cannes premiere, Benoît Régent, who was Olivier in Blue, died suddenly, aged forty-one.  A decade later, Philippe Volter, who in the same film played the Paris estate agent through whom Julie rents a flat, committed suicide, in his mid-forties.  In March 1996, Krzysztof Kieślowski himself died, during open-heart surgery following a heart attack, at the age of fifty-four.  He had announced his retirement from film-making at the premiere of Red but his Wikipedia entry indicates that he was soon having second thoughts.  Just before his untimely death, Kieślowski had been working with Krzysztof Piesiewicz on scripts for a Dante-inspired Hell-Purgatory-Heaven trilogy.

    The two leads are a big reason why Red stands out as the high point of Three Colours.  Irène Jacob, who first came to prominence as the title character in Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Véronique (1991), is doubly appealing here.  Valentine’s beauty is undeniable but unaffected; we can believe she earns money as a model but Jacob gives her a subtle innocence and makes Valentine very likeable (except when it comes to canine care).  The great Jean-Louis Trintignant complements Jacob marvellously.   He gradually develops Kern from a desiccated, reptilian figure into something richer and mysterious.  While the cameo reappearances of the lead actors in Blue and White are of course the most striking reference to these earlier films, I was even more pleased to see Kieślowski deal with what he must have regarded as unfinished business from Blue.  He reintroduces a bent-double old woman, who struggles to reach up to put a bottle into a bottle bank.  In Blue, in Paris, Juliette Binoche’s Julie watched this struggle from a distance.  In Red, in Geneva, the bottle teeters on the edge, as it did before, but Valentine lends a helping hand to get it safely inside.

    30 May 2023

Posts navigation