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      Still Charming at 50: Luis Buñuel’s Greatest Hit

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      “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois” is a comedy of frustrations in which a sextet of super-civilized haute bourgeois repeatedly attempt and fail to sit down at dinner.Luis Buñuel is a filmmaker with few peers and a unique career trajectory. A hardcore Surrealist in 1920s Paris and a propagandist for Republican Spain during the Civil War, Buñuel found refuge in the Mexican film industry before making a triumphant, late-life return to France and the art cinema pantheon.“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois” was Buñuel’s greatest commercial and critical success, capped with the 1972 Oscar for best foreign film. Given a new 4K digital restoration, it has been revived for a two-week run at Film Forum.Buñuel, who died in 1983, intended “The Discreet Charm” as his last film (it was not), and it recapitulates certain career-long concerns. The movie is typically described as a comedy of frustration in which a sextet of well-heeled, super-civilized haute bourgeois (five French people and the ambassador from an imaginary South American country) repeatedly attempt and fail to sit down at dinner. As such, it elaborates on the thwarted desires that fuel two earlier masterpieces of his: “L’age d’Or,” made with Salvador Dalí in 1930, and Buñuel’s penultimate Mexican production, “The Exterminating Angel” (1962).The movie is suavely irrational, predicated on interlocking dreams (and dreams within dreams), as well as assorted terrorists, gangsters and army officers, along with an extremely obliging bishop (Julien Bertheau). It is also an avant-garde sitcom. The men are ruling-class criminals — although the ambassador (Fernando Rey) is far craftier than his French buddies (Paul Frankeur and Jean-Pierre Cassel). The two older women (Delphine Seyrig and Stéphane Audran) are ferociously poised fashion police; the group’s youngest member (Bulle Ogier) is a bit of a wild card. Much of the humor relies on their inane observations and absurd sang-froid in a succession of increasingly awkward social situations. (Imagine a smart tearoom running out of tea!)A few scenes of torture notwithstanding, American critics swooned for “The Discreet Charm.” Andrew Sarris called it “clearly the film of the year.” Vincent Canby’s New York Times review hailed it as “the unique creation of a director who, at 72, has never been more fully in control of his talents, as a filmmaker, a moralist, social critic and humorist.” While it is hard to disagree with this assessment, it’s possible to prefer Buñuel’s less digestible works — particularly “Viridiana” (1961), which sneaked past Spain’s fascist censors, and the low-budget Mexican films that were, of necessity, directed against the grain.“The Discreet Charm” is not without its pleasures. Seyrig, Audran, and Ogier are magnificent farceurs. Buñuel might be shooting fish in a barrel, but French manners have seldom been so expertly ridiculed. A few of the movie’s pranks (an inconvenient death disrupts one dinner) still shock; others (Ogier parading around in Napoleon’s hat) remain laugh-out-loud funny. It’s fascinating to see Buñuel’s engagement with the Godard of “La Chinoise” and “Weekend” and even, in the casting of Rey, “The French Connection.”And yet, while “The Discreet Charm” is not exactly complacent, neither is it unreconciled. For all its unpatriotic and anticlerical jibes, the movie is too expansively genial to be truly discomfiting. The Oscar is the tip-off, even if Buñuel did suggest that his producer had bribed the Academy to get it.The Discreet Charm of the BourgeoisieThrough July 7 at Film Forum in Manhattan; filmforum.org. More

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      ‘Flux Gourmet’ Review: Mastering the Art of Fringe Cooking

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      Peter Strickland’s latest film is a speculative comedy about art, desire and gastrointestinal discomfort.What if the primary sensory goal of cooking were to stimulate the ears? What if you experienced a movie through your nostrils and taste buds, or felt it in your gut? These bizarre, intriguing questions are part of the foundation, the spine — the sofrito — of “Flux Gourmet,” the fifth feature by the British writer-director Peter Strickland.The first, “Katalin Varga” (2009) was a revenge drama set in Transylvania. Since then, Strickland has departed both from genre conventions and from known geography, conjuring parallel realities organized around particular aesthetic and erotic obsessions: Italian horror and sound design in “Berberian Sound Studio” (2013); entomology and B.D.S.M. in “The Duke of Burgundy” (2015); high fashion and Italian horror again in “In Fabric” (2019); and now cuisine.Not the kind you eat — though there are some awkward dinner gatherings and episodes of surreptitious snacking. Food, in the world of this film, is the music of love. Culinary sound collectives are the equivalent of rock bands, building walls of expressive noise from the whine of blenders and the sizzle of vegetables dropped in hot oil.One such group, which can’t agree on a name, has been granted a residence at an “institute devoted to culinary and alimentary performance” in a converted rural manor house. One narrative thread follows the simmering tensions between Jan Stevens (Gwendoline Christie), who is in charge of the place, and Elle di Elle (Fatma Mohamed, a Strickland stalwart), the visionary, vegetarian leader of the troupe. Elle adamantly rejects the slightest hint of constructive criticism from Jan, who believes that her largess entitles her to be heard.This tension exacerbates the rivalry within the group. Elle may be the leader, but her bandmates, a floppy-haired emo kid (Asa Butterfield) and an angular avant-gardist (Ariane Labed) have nascent creative agendas of their own. There’s also an element of sexual intrigue, as often happens when aesthetic passions are inflamed. Meanwhile, a rejected band of culinary artists lurks in the shadows, threatening violence.All of this is chronicled — mostly in Greek voice-over with English subtitles — by a saturnine fellow named Stones (Makis Papadimitriou) who works as the institute’s “dossierge.” A writer by trade and a wallflower by temperament, he observes Elle and her colleagues, filming their meetings and performances, interviewing them together and taking notes on their squabbles.The poor man has troubles of his own. Digestive troubles, to be precise, which disrupt his sleep and sour his already gloomy mood. The resident doctor (Richard Bremmer) is a pompous boor, and Stones spends a lot of his time in the lavatory, the rest of it wearing the unmistakable grimace of a man holding back considerable gas.There is obvious comic potential in his predicament, but Strickland doesn’t exploit it in the obvious ways. This isn’t “Blazing Saddles”; audible flatulence is restricted to a single plaintive note, rather than a full symphony. But the unheard music of Stone’s lower intestinal tract is nonetheless a key structural element, organizing “Flux Gourmet” into an elegant fugue of contrapuntal themes: grossness and refinement; pleasure and disgust; appetite and discipline.The film isn’t so much an allegory or fantasy as a witty philosophical speculation on some elemental human issues. We are animals driven by lust, hunger and aggression, but also delicate creatures in love with beauty and abstraction. Those two sides of our nature collide in unexpected, infinitely variable ways.“Flux Gourmet” is Strickland’s funniest film to date, with more outright jokes than its predecessors, and a few sublime visual gags, many of them involving Jan’s outfits (they were designed by Giles Deacon, with hats by Steven Jones). It’s like a Restoration comedy run through a John Waters filter and sprinkled with Luis Buñuel itching powder.Maybe such comparisons are unfair. Certainly Elle insists on the absolute integrity and originality of her work, and even as “Flux Gourmet” mocks her self-seriousness it also defends her dignity. Mohamed, fully committed to the bit, allows you to believe that Elle is both a courageous genius and a complete nut. I’m inclined to think Strickland is more of the former than the latter. I’ve never encountered a flavor palette quite like the one he assembles here, and while this movie isn’t always easy to digest, it’s a taste very much worth acquiring.Flux GourmetNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Human Trial’ Review: The Race for a Diabetes Cure

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      The married documentarians Lisa Hepner and Guy Mossman follow people with diabetes who put themselves forward as test subjects for a potential solution.Imagine what a world without diabetes would look like. A vast reduction in pain, suffering, needless death. And, as a bonus, a significant drop in pharmaceutical ads, probably.The goal is far away, but not as remote as you may imagine. The married documentarians Lisa Hepner and Guy Mossman spent more than five years making “The Human Trial,” a movie chronicling one research company’s quest for a cure and following two people with diabetes who put themselves forward as test subjects.The movie opens with footage of Hepner taking a blood sugar reading. As someone with Type 1 diabetes, she is personally invested in this subject. Her narration tells of her 2014 discovery of a San Diego company, ViaCyte, which is developing a treatment by which insulin-making stem cells can be implanted in patients. (This is admittedly a simplistic description of what the treatment is meant to do; the movie goes into more detail, with clarity and patience.)Over the course of several years, the moviemakers keep tabs on two diabetes patients, Mason and Gregory, who allow themselves to have modules that release stem cells implanted in them. One finds his blood-sugar levels getting lower. But is this a placebo effect? The movie is blunt in presenting the patients’ emotional ups and downs, and shows the sometimes weary realism of the researchers. It also offers another kind of weariness: ViaCyte is in constant need of new funding.Shot largely in hospital waiting areas, offices and conference rooms, “The Human Trial” is not a visually dynamic movie. But it builds a good head of steam in the narrative intrigue department before resolving on a low-key note of hope.The Human TrialNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘Wildhood’ Review: On the Road, Sorting Out Growing Up

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      Three young men explore their Indigenous heritage and questions about their gender and sexual identity in this film.In the tender coming-of-age tale “Wildhood,” Link (Phillip Lewitski) is a young man of Mi’kmaq heritage who journeys across rural areas in search of the mother he hardly knew. The movie was written and directed by the Nova Scotian filmmaker Bretten Hannam, who is Two-Spirit and nonbinary, and their camera intimately observes Link as he slowly casts off the protective shield he once needed to survive.Laconic with a stiff upper lip, Link seems at first like a familiar character. He is tough and stubborn, and fumes at the world around him. His only ally is his little brother, Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony), and together they scavenge for food, explore the outdoors and endure beatings by their brutal father — until an unexpected discovery inspires Link to flee his trailer park home with Travis in tow.The rest of the story unspools on the road, as the brothers and their new friend, Pasmay (Joshua Odjick), trek through lens-flare-speckled forests in the hope of locating Link’s Mi’kmaq mother. There are a few scenes of weepy sentimentality, and many more exuberant montages. Throughout, hazy hand-held camerawork and a synth-heavy score encourage a drifty, lyrical mood.These tactics are well-worn. But Hannam is sensitive in using his craft to soften the rugged young men at the center of “Wildhood.” The quiet candor with which Hannam addresses issues of masculinity, and how it intersects with an Indigenous and queer identity, elevates this otherwise conventional story.WildhoodNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Apples’ Review: Forget Me Not

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      Amnesia strikes individuals at random in this absurdist dramedy from Greece, which may be too deadpan for its own good.Firmly in the tradition of the “Greek Weird Wave” that most viewers associate with the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, “Apples” is a deadpan dramedy with an eerily familiar dystopian premise.Amnesia spreads like a sickness, striking at random and forcing the unluckiest individuals to complete in a bizarre program that equips patients with a new identity. Such is the case with Aris (Aris Servetalis), a middle-aged, droopy-eyed wretch who, one afternoon, literally takes a bus ride to nowhere. By the time he reaches the end of the line, he has no idea who he is.Written and directed by Christos Nikou, “Apples” follows Aris on the ostensible road to recovery, drifting through a depopulated Athens where the stilted, phantom-like people that do enter the frame beg the (existential) question: are these the infected? Or is everyone, in their own way, just as lost?Initially, watching Aris commit to the training program has its charms. Every day, he listens to cassette tapes that instruct him to create specific memories — riding a bike, getting a lap dance, attending a costume party. But our hero, a kind of mute and wide-eyed space alien, makes these totally ordinary activities feel absurd. That the program obliges him to take a Polaroid each time he completes a task adds to the gloomy, if chuckle-inducing, artificiality.These listless proceedings are shaken up when Aris meets Anna (Sofia Georgovasili), a chirpy fellow amnesiac. Anna’s intentions are fittingly obscure, but the development of an actual, recognizably human relationship between the two gives the film a pulse where there was once only blank-faced dark comedy. Still, the movie never manages to hit above a dim emotional pitch, and a final-act awakening lands with a shrug. You can rest assured, at least, that Aris does eventually stir out of his zombified state — and that apples actually do play a starring role.ApplesNot rated. In Greek, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Black Phone’ Review: The Dead Have Your Number

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      Ethan Hawke plays the big bad in this 1970s-set child-abduction thriller.More touching than terrifying, Scott Derrickson’s “Black Phone” is less a horror movie than a coming-of-age ghost story. In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill.The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous. Set in small-town Colorado in the 1970s, the story centers on 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), an ace baseball pitcher burdened by a dead mother, school bullies and an abusive, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies). An early lecture from a new friend (a charismatic Miguel Cazarez Mora) about fighting back will prove prescient when Finney becomes the latest victim of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a clownish magician and the abductor of several neighborhood boys.While light on scares and short on specifics (The Grabber is a generic, somewhat comic villain with an unexplored psychopathology), “The Black Phone” is more successful as a celebration of youthful resilience. As Finney languishes in a soundproofed cement dungeon, his spunky little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, a standout), is using the psychic gifts she inherited from her mother to find him. Finney also has help from the killer’s previous victims, who call him on the ancient rotary phone on the wall above his bed, undeterred by the fact that it has long been disconnected.Revisiting elements of his own childhood and adolescence, Derrickson (who wrote the screenplay with C. Robert Cargill) evokes a time when Ted Bundy was on the news and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was at the drive-in. The movie’s images have a mellow, antique glaze that strengthens the nostalgic mood while softening the dread. (Compare, for instance, Finney’s kidnapping with Georgie’s abduction in the 2017 chiller “It”: both feature balloons and a masked monster, but only one is terrifying.) It doesn’t help that Hawke is stranded in a character whose torture repertoire consists mainly of elaborate hand gestures.Leaning heavily into the familiar narrative obsessions of Hill’s father, Stephen King — plucky kids, feckless parents, creepy clowns and their accessories — “The Black Phone” feels unavoidably derivative. But the young actors are appealing, the setting is fondly imagined and the anxieties of adolescence are front and center. For most of us, those worries were more than enough to conjure the shivers.The Black PhoneRated R for bloody apparitions and blasphemous words. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Love & Gelato’ Review: A Young Girl, Transfigured by Italy

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      A mother’s final wish leads her daughter to retrace her Roman holiday in this lighthearted coming-of-age story.For many American teenagers, college is the great undiscovered country. But in the romantic comedy, “Love & Gelato,” Lina (Susanna Skaggs) has just lost her beloved mother to cancer. Before she matriculates to her first year of university at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she is obligated to live out her mother’s final wish for her. Her mother had a transformative trip to Italy in her youth, and her request is that Lina should follow in her footsteps. Cautious Lina can find a way to worry about anything, but magnanimously, she agrees to spend her summer in Rome.Lina inevitably finds herself moved by the beauty of the city — its food, its vistas and most of all, its prettily entreating boys. She becomes infatuated with Alessandro (Saul Nanni), a blue-eyed social butterfly bound for a Boston fall. And lest Alessandro prove too good to be true, a warm and welcoming chef, Lorenzo (Tobia De Angelis), takes an interest in her fish-out-of-water charms. With her mother’s old friends and Lorenzo as her guides, Lina finds purpose in Italy, even daring to search for her Italian father, the man her mother left behind.This is a story where the characters woo each other with artless naïveté, and the movie is shot in a similarly unassuming fashion. The writer and director Brandon Camp opts for a cheerily overlit, comedic tone. It’s the kind of film that is more interested in the appeal of a good Italian accent than it is in finding novel, or even particularly beautiful, ways to shoot and see Rome. The conscious callowness is agreeable, but it lacks freshness, like a midnight pasta reheated in the microwave.Love & GelatoNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes’ Review: Excavating Images From the Fallout

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      This archival documentary uses footage from the former Soviet Union to reconstruct the nuclear disaster from the perspectives of people who were present.Drawing on archival visual material from the former Soviet Union and a mix of old and contemporary interviews, the tense documentary “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes” reconstructs the 1986 nuclear disaster from the perspectives of people present during its devastation.We hear from Lyudmila Ihnatenko (the inspiration for Jessie Buckley’s character on the HBO dramatized mini-series), a resident of the area who was pregnant when the catastrophe occurred, and whose husband, a firefighter, went to the plant after the initial explosion. Oleksiy Breus, an engineer at Chernobyl, speaks of going to work the next day not even knowing what had happened. It is chilling to hear about the slowness of the evacuation — there is mention of children going to playgrounds instead of sheltering indoors — or to see flashes in the imagery that we’re told came from the film itself registering radiation.Some of the most powerful footage involves the “liquidators,” men charged with containment and cleanup in the months after the accident. One dismisses talk of radiation as nonsense. Soon after, the movie shows flabbergasting video of them shoveling debris while presumably absorbing lethal doses.Although it’s mentioned at the beginning that the Soviets documented the accident’s aftermath, hoping to propagandize the story of a heroic rescue, you might wonder who would possibly be holding a video camera at that moment. But “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” directed by James Jones, does not extensively explore the history of its components. It’s less concerned with the tapes themselves than with the act of bearing witness.Chernobyl: The Lost TapesNot rated. In Ukrainian, Russian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More