Luis Buñuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie | The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

This being a film directed by Buñuel, there is criticism of governmental corruption, of the bourgeoisie, of religion, the military, the police, and by extension of all institutions. Buñuel's main weapons are surrealism and/or absurdity.

At the beginning there are six people at a dinner which is an evening too early: Rafael Acosta (Fernando Rey, ambassador of the (fictitious) South American Republic of Miranda), François Thévenot (Paul Frankeur), his wife Simone (Delphine Seyrig) and her sister Florence (Bulle Ogier) arrive unexpectedly at the home of Henri Sénéchal (Jean-Pierre Castel) and his wife Alice (Stéphane Audran). This is to be the first of several interrupted or non-existent eating or drinking failures, such as when François drives the others to a simple auberge he knows, although the door is at first locked but when they are seated and about to make orders they discover that there is a dead patron a few yards away. They leave hastily.

Raphael sells François and Henri a large quantity of cocaine (proved to be excellent by the fictional Harrison-Srauder test), and during the transaction Raphael looks out of the window, sees a young woman outside the Embassy of Miranda selling toys, and shoots a clockwork dog, explaining to the mystified François that she's a terrorist fighting against his government.

When the dinner is to take place again, Henri and Alice beforehand climb out of their bedroom window to have sex in the garden, causing Raphael and François to suspect that there's gong to be a raid by the drug squad, so they depart. When Henri and Alice return to the house they're surprised to find their guests have gone, although a bishop dressed as a gardener turns up and – after a slight misunderstanding – is employed as a gardener.

There's really no need to ask for explanations here, particularly as some of the later events – such as the murder of a colonel by Raphael, the assassination of all the main characters, the appearance of ghosts, etc – can usually be explained by bad dreams, even by dreams within dreams. This is, after all, a film by Buñuel. Cue for the six principal characters – as they've done several times before in the movie – to inexplicably walk down a country road together, although this final time they're not walking away from the water tower but towards it.