Video loop, 21 mn.
Taking as a reference the Buñuelian model of the impossible meal, The Charm of the Bourgeoisie articulates with a group shot of the main protagonists of Theorem the two existing versions of Caravaggio’s The Pilgrims of Emmaus from the National Gallery in London and the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milano.
Working, in the same way as The Arrest, around a turning point in Pasolini’s film where the Visitor notifies his hosts, following the receipt of a telegram, of his imminent departure from the house where he has been staying, the video editing similarly attempts to annihilate reality through its back-and-forth effects. The opposition that the fixity of the filmic frame engages with the profusion of details of the paintings requested, engaged unlike this one in a movement of perpetual renewal, marks both the form of astonishment which crosses the audience and the wide palette of emotions that overwhelm it. As if suspended, Time deploys forms of virtuality through pictorial incursions which announce the movements which will be made for each of the characters in the story, as well carried by the warm nature of the palette of the London version, as starched by that most extinct of the Pinacoteca di Brera.
