La Grande bouffe (1973)
Directed by Marco Ferreri

Film Review

A truly black comedy, this is a film that elevates vulgarity and bad taste - if not to a fine art - to great comic effect at least.  With on-screen vomiting, endless fart jokes (done literally to death) and the amazing exploding toilet (the funniest thing ever in French cinema?), La grande bouffe must surely win anyone's award for the most shamelessly vulgar example of mainstream French cinema.  Yet, in spite of that (or, perversely for that reason), this film has a strange melancholic charm that makes it compelling viewing - even if, for most of the time, we are just watching four fat middle-aged men stuffing their faces.

It is curious that the film does not explain why the four central characters want to kill themselves - in fact this is only revealed one third of the way into the film.  Consequently, the viewer feels throughout that something is missing.  Maybe this is what lends the film its tragic dimension and makes the boorish vulgarity on display somehow more tolerable.  A very strange and disturbing film - but one with some absolutely outrageous comic moments.

Film Synopsis

One winter, four well-off middle-aged men who have grown tired of life decide to kill themselves.  For Marcello, an Italian airline pilot with an over-developed libido, life has become intolerable now that he is impotent.  A series of misunderstandings with his wife has led Ugo, a successful restaurateur, to see death as an easy way out of his problems.  After his divorce, Michel, a radio presenter, finds modern life so excruciatingly dull that it is scarcely worth living.  And then there is a Philippe, a well-regarded judge who lives a hermit-like existence with his nursemaid, an over-protective old woman who prevents him from having relations with any other member of the female sex.

Now that life has nothing left to offer them, the four friends agree that they will all commit suicide by eating themselves to death.  Philippe has laid on a lavish banquet at his large isolated house on the outskirts of Paris and the party is soon under way, with the four gastronomes merrily gorging their way through course after course of the most sumptuous food every prepared for a condemned man.  When a schoolteacher named Andrea turns up unexpectedly, she is invited to join the feast and, fascinated by what she sees, she can hardly decline.  Andrea's welcome presence awakens in Marcello the need for female company, so a party of prostitutes is promptly invited to the house to liven up the self-destructive orgy even more.

The prostitutes soon become disgusted by this exhibition of male debauchery and make a quick exit, leaving the four bloated suicides to continue their grotesque exhibition of bingeing and flatulence, with Andréa watching on in morbid amusement.  A sudden explosion of human waste from the over-strained toilet adds to the hilarity of the situation.  It isn't long before the men's wish to shuffle off their mortal coil is granted.  Marcello is the first to depart, frozen to death in his car when he tries to make a getaway in his vintage Bugatti.  Michel's digestive system then gives way under the excessive load that has been placed on it - not a pleasant way to go.  Ugo and Philippe are not far behind, but at least they died indulging in their favourite pastime...