The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

I watched "United 93" yesterday, but guess what -- I don't want to review it -- it's too raw and upsetting a film; while it captures the frantic feeling of what may have been, it is still conjecture, and a scenario which I don't really want to think about too much (which is probably why it was nominated as best picture, but also why it did little box office).

So to get myself back to unreality, I watched this late masterpiece from Spanish surrealist director Luis Bunuel, which actually was an Academy Award winner and deservedly so.  From his early collaboration with Salvador Dali through his long exile in Mexico down to his resurrected career, largely in France, Bunuel has made a tantalizing collection of films.  In this one the basic plot concerns six friends who keep arranging to meet for a friendly meal but who never get around to actually dining, as one or another bizarre interruption descends upon them.  The six are Fernando Rey playing the ambassador from the mythical country of Miranda who is in cahoots with two businessmen to smuggle drugs into France (one of these is the very recently deceased Jean-Pierre Cassel), their wives played by Stephane Audran and Delphine Seyrig, and Seyrig's younger and permanently drunk and/or high sister played by Bulle Ogier -- a super sextet.  Their meetings are interspersed with dream sequences of meetings so that it soon becomes less and less clear as to which events are actually happening and which are imagined, which is fairly typical of Bunuel's approach.  He may treat life as a dream much of the time, but he is unafraid of shooting down any sacred cow that may appear on his horizon.