Objects of Desire: The Films of Luis Buñuel

This retrospective includes more than 20 of Buñuel’s most accomplished films, both canonical screen classics and underappreciated rarities.

The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ensayo de un Crimen)

• On Monday, November 14 at 7 pm. At AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center. Free.
• Introduction by film scholar Carlos Gutiérrez.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, Mexico, 1955, 89 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

This perverse, horror-tinged comedy from the director’s Mexican period is a bizarro tale of music boxes, murder, and mannequins. Convinced from a young age that his music box has the power to kill, Archibaldo de la Cruz grows up to be a wannabe serial killer whose attempts at a sex-murder are repeatedly thwarted by kismet. Buñuel layers on the Grand Guignol touches (including a memorably macabre incineration of a dummy) in one of his most purely enjoyable films.

Mexican Bus Ride

• On Tuesday, November 15 at 6:45 pm at the Mexican Cultural Institute. Free, RSVP required: [email protected].
• Introduction and discussion with Carlos A. Gutiérrez Co-founding Director of Cinema Tropical.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, Mexico, 1952, 74 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

A young man and woman’s honeymoon is cut short when the man learns that his mother has fallen ill back at home. The newlywed couple rush there to discover the other sons neglecting their mom in order to plot their squandering of the inheritance. The newlywed son takes quite an adventurous bus-ride to a distant city to get his mother’s will notarized to the contrary, and is faced with multiple temptations along the way.

Illusion Travels by Streetcar

• On Thursday, November 17 at 6:30 pm. At At American University Doyle / Forman Theater, McKinley Building. Free.
• Introductions and discussion with Carlos A. Gutierrez, co-founding Director of Cinema Tropical, and AU professor Jeffrey Middents.

Comic, surreal, political, with marvelous cinematography. Two entrepreneurial transit workers renovate a streetcar on their own time, but the boss has a deal to replace it. They steal #133, on a mission: “an education of the public,” and crisscross Mexico City, giving free rides to a cross-section of humanity.

Tristana

• On Friday, November 18 at 5 pm and Monday, November 21 at 7 pm. At AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center. Buy tickets.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, Spain / Italy / France, 1970, 95 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Orphaned at an impressionable age, young Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) is taken into the home of Don Lope (Fernando Rey), a well-to-do gentleman from a respected Toledo family. But Don Lope is also a reactionary lecher, who abuses Tristana’s mind, body and spirit. Escaping the Don’s abuse, Tristana runs off with her artist lover Horacio (Franco Nero), only to reluctantly return to her abusive guardian’s house after she loses a leg to illness. But secretly, Tristana plots revenge on her tormentor.

Belle de Jour

• On Saturday, November 19 at 9:30 pm, Tuesday, November 22 at 9:15 pm, and Wednesday, November 23 at 9:15 pm. At AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center. Buy tickets.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, France/Italy, 1967, 101 minutes. In French with English subtitles.

One moment doctor Jean Sorel and wife Catherine Deneuve are exchanging bland “I-love-yous” from the comfort of a horsedrawn carriage; the next she’s on the receiving end of a roadside whipping –a scene revealed to be Deneuve’s harmless if vivid armchair daydream. But when the bored housewife starts spending her afternoons at a high-class brothel –to the delight of her husband’s lecherous friend Michel Piccoli– who’s to say where reality ends and fantasy begins?

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie)

• On Sunday, November 20 at 9:30 pm and Wednesday, November 23 at 7 pm. At AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center. Buy tickets.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, France, 19672, 102 minutes. In French and Spanish with English subtitles.

A sextet of society types, including Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Stéphane Audran and Bulle Ogier, maintain their decorum in the face of increasingly farcical absurdities. A series of surrealistically dashed dinner plans –reasons ranging from a wake taking place in the adjoining room to soldiers bivouacking on the lawn– escalates into sexual, political –even cinematic–shenanigans. Buñuel dispenses with any differentiation between “reality” and “dream,” but keeps the chaos cool.

Death in the Garden (La Mort en Ce Jardin)

• On Tuesday, November 22 at 7 pm at 4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007 (Cultural services of the French Embassy.) Free, RSVP required.
• Directed by Luis Buñuel, Mexico-France, 1956, 104 minutes. In French with English subtitles.

Amid a revolution in a South American mining outpost, a band of fugitives –a notorious adventurer, a local hooker, a priest, an aging diamond miner, and his deaf-mute daughter– are forced to flee for their lives into the jungle. Shot in vibrant Eastmancolor, Death in the Garden is an adventure film with Surrealist gestures and symbolism.

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