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The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 1972 Full Movie Online

HD 7.5 101 min

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie Full Movie Online

Plot Summary

A French bourgeois couple, François and Simone Thévenot, accompany François’s colleague Don Rafael Acosta (the ambassador from the South American nation of Miranda) and Simone’s sister Florence to the house of the Sénéchals, the hosts of a dinner party. Alice Sénéchal is surprised to see them, and explains that she expected them the following evening and has no dinner prepared. The would-be guests then invite Alice to join them for dinner at a nearby inn.

Unusual Dinner Plans

Arriving at the inn, the party finds the doors locked. They knock and are reluctantly invited in by a waitress who mentions that the restaurant is under new management. Inside, there are no diners, and the prices on the menu are disconcertingly low. The party hears wailing from an adjoining room and discovers a vigil for the manager, who died a few hours earlier. The party is told that the coroner is coming soon, but they hurriedly depart.

Intriguing Encounters

Acosta, François, and Alice’s husband Henri meet the next day at the Mirandan embassy to discuss the proceeds of a large cocaine deal. Acosta sees a young woman selling clockwork-animal toys outside; he shoots one of the toys with a rifle and the woman runs off. He explains that she is part of a Maoist Mirandan terrorist group that has been targeting him for months.

Two days later, the friends attempt to have lunch at the Sénéchals’, but Henri and his wife escape to the garden to have sex instead of joining them. One of the group takes their unexplained absence to mean that the Sénéchals know the police are coming and have left to avoid arrest for their involvement in drug trafficking, and they leave in a panic.

A Series of Surreal Events

When the Sénéchals return from the garden to find the rest of the group gone, they meet a bishop who has donned their gardener’s clothing. They throw him out, but when he returns wearing his bishop’s robes, they embrace him with deference. The bishop asks to work for them as their gardener. He tells them that when he was a child his parents were poisoned with arsenic and the culprit was never apprehended.

The women visit a teahouse just as it has run out of tea, coffee, and milk, although it finally transpires that they do have water. While they are waiting, a soldier tells them about his childhood in a flashback. After his mother’s death, his cold-hearted father sent him to military school. The ghost of the soldier’s mother informed him that the man was not his real father but his father’s killer; they had dueled over her. She asks her son to poison the culprit, and he complies.

Dramatic Revelations

Simone meets Acosta, with whom she is having an affair, at his apartment. They retreat to his bedroom to have sex but are interrupted by a visit from her husband, whereupon she makes a convenient excuse and leaves with him. Acosta is then visited by the terrorist, who has come to kill him. He ambushes and chastises her, and tells her to leave after she refuses his sexual advances. As she leaves, he signals to agents waiting across the street, who capture her.

The group convenes at the Sénéchals’ for dinner, but are interrupted the arrival of an army regiment, who join the dinner only to be called away for alarmingly close maneuvers. The colonel invites them to his house in return; Henri dreams that the colonel’s dining-room is a stage set in a theatrical performance where the audience is angry with the actors for not knowing their lines. François dreams that Acosta gets grilled at the party about the political situation in Miranda and after trading insults with and being slapped by the colonel, Acosta shoots him in retaliation.

Twists and Turns

The bishop is called away from gardening to give absolution to a dying man. The man confesses to poisoning a couple for which he had worked as a gardener due to their mistreatment of him. The bishop views a picture of him with the couple and realizes that they were his parents; he finishes giving the dying gardener absolution, but fatally shoots him with a shotgun afterwards.

The Sénéchals, the Thévenots, and Acosta are arrested for drug trafficking. The police chief dreams that the ghost of a former inspector killed in retribution for torturing a student protestor releases the traffickers. He wakes up from the dream to learn that the Interior Minister has ordered them to be released; the Minister’s rationale for releasing them is inaudible due to jet engine noise. Acosta dreams that they return to the Sénéchals’ for dinner but are shot by a rival gang of drug traffickers from Marseille. After waking up, he walks to the kitchen and sloppily eats leftovers stored in the refrigerator.