DVD OF THE WEEK: La Grande Bouffe

La Grande Bouffe
Directed by Marco Ferreri
1973, 129 minutes, In French with English subtitles
Koch Lorber Films

In 1973, Cannes jury president Ingrid Bergman condemned La Grande Bouffe as the most sordid and vulgar movie she had ever seen. (According to an unidentified talking head from Marco Ferreri: The Director Who Came From the Future, an excerpt of which is included on this newly standalone DVD, Bergman even vomited after a viewing). And yet, this scandalously morbid comedy went on to share that year's FIPRESCI prize with Eustache's The Mother and the Whore, meaning taste is always relative, and what a funny word to bring up in a film about food; or rather, its excessive consumption. How did the late Ferreri—Italy's subversive, surreal-humored nihilist—convince European all-stars like Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret to shoulder a film so debased that it has drawn comparisons to Salò and, as indicated by Roger Ebert's negative review that year, prompted co-star Marcello Mastroianni's then-lover Catherine Deneuve's refusal to speak to him for a week after attending a screening?

(For that matter, what convinced you, dear reader, to take a peek after the jump?) La Grand Bouffe is a debauched watch about debauchery itself, though its notoriety has clearly faded, not least for which we've been desensitized over time. For no explicit reason, four well-to-do pals—pilot Marcello (Mastroianni), television personality Michel (Piccoli), judge Philippe (Noiret) and master chef Ugo (Ugo Tognazzi)—have made a suicide pact to hibernate in Philippe's inherited Parisian villa and literally gorge themselves to death. Truly insatiable hedonists all, especially sex-crazed Marcello, the men invite three prostitutes to help consume the truckloads of delivered meats, and the scatological effects of their cause are about all we're given access to: after countless scenes of eating, drinking and fucking, we're then privy to the burping, defecating, puking, and dying. (You eye-rollingly expect and dismiss fart jokes in an American gross-out comedy, but Marcello massaging Michel's distended stomach to release a full half-minute of flatulence seemed genuinely shocking!) King pervert Marcello, an exemplar of their awful behavior, wears a thong as an eye patch to dinner one moment, and screws a whore with a vintage Bugatti manifold the next. Pigs devour pigs.

The only significant game-changer is the entrance of zaftig schoolmarm Andrea (scene-stealer Andréa Ferréol), who stumbles onto this mini-Sodom when her field-tripping students wish to visit the villa's linden tree where "Mr. Boileau" once sat under (17th century poet, critic and satirist Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, a possible hint to Ferreri's intent?). Later that night, just as the hookers first arrive, Andrea accepts her invitation to dinner, her voracious appetite politely revealing itself. Immediately, Philippe is smitten and proposes marriage, to which she accepts, and still manages to bang the other men throughout her stay; unlike the prostitutes, it's on her own terms. Is she destined to stay alive because she gives pleasure and can therefore survive pleasure unlike these out-of-control bacchanalians? Ah, and herein lies the divisive issue about La Grand Bouffe: Rarely are any of the character's conversations existential or sociopolitical or even intellectual at all, so if Ferreri means the film to be an ruthless attack on Western or merely bourgeois decadence (all the menu items are fit for an aristrocrat), or a probing critique on the unrestricted boundaries of human behavior, there are no fingers directly pointing; they're all stuck in mountains of pâté. If the film purposely and perversely evades any editorialization, are we meant to laugh or be thoroughly outraged? Again, there's that double entendre: it's a matter of taste. One man's feast is another's stomachache, and call me nuts, but I was less sickened than amused (though I'll certainly pay a bit more attention to my own moderation). With my belly full, I can only belch that Ferreri is the transgressive Buñuel, which makes The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie merely La Grande Bouffe for anorexics.

Posted by ahillis at April 8, 2009 11:23 PM