The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Lucy Gallardo, Jacqueline Andere, José Baviera, Luis Beristáin, Claudio Brook, Augusto Benedico, Roda Elena Durgel, Ofelia Guilmáin, César del Campo, Nadia Haro Oliva, Antonio Bravo.

Bizarre, trenchant class comedy from Buñuel; highly symbolic, with the director’s expected surrealistic touches added for effect (if his surrealistic touches can ever be described as “expected”). A pack of upper-classers attend a formal dinner party but find that they are unable to leave after the servants all escape. They grow hungry and desperate and turn on each other in rancor…how long before suicide, animal slaughter, and suggestions of human sacrifice arise? No explanation is ever given for why they cannot leave (though one can make guesses based on social satire…that are probably incorrect) and no explanation is needed for why they start behaving the way they do—Buñuel creates a cyclical internal logic that only he can orchestrate. Sinister and scathing, and stippled with versatile performances that make some of these caricatures feel real, stressed, and lived-in. The afterthought attacks on the church late in the game aren’t as successful, though, and the high-handed use of repetition does tend to get a little, well, repetitive. Filmed in Mexico City.

79/100