Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Fernando Rey | ... | Don Rafael Acosta | |
Paul Frankeur | ... | François Thévenot | |
Delphine Seyrig | ... | Simone Thévenot | |
Bulle Ogier | ... | Florence | |
Stéphane Audran | ... | Alice Sénéchal (as Stephane Audran) | |
Jean-Pierre Cassel | ... | Henri Sénéchal | |
Julien Bertheau | ... | Monsignor Dufour | |
Milena Vukotic | ... | Ines | |
Maria Gabriella Maione | ... | Guerrilla | |
Claude Piéplu | ... | Colonel | |
Muni | ... | Peasant | |
Pierre Maguelon | ... | Police Sergeant | |
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François Maistre | ... | Inspector Delecluze |
Michel Piccoli | ... | Interior Minister | |
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Ellen Bahl |
Several bourgeois friends planning to get together for dinner experience a succession of highly unusual occurrences that interfere with their expected dining enjoyment. Written by Ed Cannon <ecannon@mail.utexas.edu>
French-Italian-Spanish co-production under the helm of director Luis Buñuel concerning an odd-duck group of upper-class friends and acquaintances in Paris who meet often for meals and conversation, only to rarely savor their cuisine due to a peculiar series of interruptions. Buñuel, who also co-authored the screenplay with Jean-Claude Carrière, at times gently skewers the hungry wealthy; his characters are not decadent nor lazy, perhaps just comically fettered; the filmmaker doesn't score points against their lives as much as he prods the folly of their ways. The lapses of reality into a satirical daisy-chain of dreams is surprising at first but finally monotonous, especially as Buñuel becomes less sly here and more mean-spirited (I could have done without the police interrogation and the piano torture). Still, there are some marvelous visual touches (such as the dinner table on-stage) accompanied by a subtle yet vivid use of color, and the cast is uniformly excellent. Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film. **1/2 from ****