"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" embodies Buñuel's distinctive style. The film tells the story of four middle-class men and women who come to dinner at the Senechar and his wife's house. Occasional events, including dreams set by the director, were interrupted and could not continue. The film does not have a complete "plot", it shuttles back and forth between dreams and reality.
The main story line of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is "eating". Although there is no complete plot, the film is interrupted again and again through the dinner, forming its own unique narrative rhythm - a frustration narrative. Buñuel's frustration narrative is different from the "everyday" narrative in Italian neorealism, because there is a certain sense of drama in it, which is a brand-new exploration of Buñuel's narrative method.
From "An Andalusian Dog", Buñuel started the wave of surrealism, and the distinctive feature of Buñuel's surrealism is the dream - always back and forth between dream and reality. There are five dreams in the film. For example, the third dream was a dream of Mr. Senéchal: a group of people went to the Colonel’s house as a guest and found themselves sitting on the stage and being surrounded by everyone; the first dream was in the restaurant , the lieutenant tells the three heroines about his childhood, mother, and murder. The five dreams are intertwined with reality, and they are from different people's perspectives, giving people a feeling that the film is always on the edge of the main line. —Deeply influenced by the Freudian school, he pays attention to the human subconscious and pursues illogical advance narrative.
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