What it’s about
This witty, surrealistic comedy of manners, tracks the constantly thwarted efforts of a group of upper-crust Parisian friends Francois and Simone Thevenot (Frankeur and Seyrig), Simone’s bibulous sister Florence (Ogier), stately Henri and Alice Senechal (Cassel and Audran), and Don Raphael (Rey), a coke-trafficking Latin American ambassador to have a civilized dinner without interruption.
Why we love it
One of the Spanish master's funniest films, the Oscar-winning “Charm” gleefully savages the manners and mores of the upper crust, employing bizarre plotlines and fanciful farce to attack the well-heeled scions of respectable society as vain, decadent, elitist, and thoroughly amoral. Rey, Seyrig, and new wave icon Ogier head the stellar ensemble cast, with Julien Bertheau standing out as a pompous, not-so-holy bishop. Buñuel's dream-within-a-dream sequences, which involve ghosts, terrorists, and sundry other characters, are simply brilliant, and bring this sublime, extended joke to the verge of divine absurdity.