Buñuel's followup to Discreet Charm is in roughly the same easy stride and the same moderate temperature: subdued color work by Edmond Richard, in warm browns, yellows, blue-grays; comfortable surroundings, tastefully decorated; a script by Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carriere that maintains a lulling pitter-patter of surrealist jokes. The movie is constructed as a relay in which one group from the roster of uniformly suave and unruffled players carries the narrative for a brief leg and then, handing off to the next group, drops out of sight for the remainder of the tricky zigzag run. Despite the frequent changes of people and of plot, the pace remains at a calm strolling gait, as if to conserve energy, and the gag ideas tend to grow old before your very eyes. There are the scheduled arrivals of impudence (communion wafers are gobbled like potato chips), inversion (eating is done while locked alone in the bathroom, and defecating is done while seated around the dining-room table on individual toilets), and incongruity (a roadside inn gathers together a motley group and gives rise to the surrealist toast, "Let's celebrate the chance that brought us together"); yet there is little surprise and still less shock about any of these arrivals. Buñuel at this point couldn't upset a wine glass. With Jean-Claude Brialy, Monica Vitti, Michel Lonsdale, and Michel Piccoli. (1974) — Duncan Shepherd
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