Featured Audience Ratings

• Stefanie C

  
  Dark and grotesque, just like Ferreri.

• Greg S

  
  Four men, one of whom is a master chef, check into a villa and resolve to eat themselves to death. It's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL meets LEAVING LAS VEGAS. Grotesque but oddly compelling, thanks to a dream cast including Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Picolli and Philippe Noiret.

• Cassandra M

  
  The European arthouse movie, since the 50s at least, has been generally seen in opposition to Hollywood. Instead of relying on cartoonish genre, broad comedy and loud, violent action, it supposedly offers analysis, detail, character, critique, context, civilised intelligence. Crudely… More
  The European arthouse movie, since the 50s at least, has been generally seen in opposition to Hollywood. Instead of relying on cartoonish genre, broad comedy and loud, violent action, it supposedly offers analysis, detail, character, critique, context, civilised intelligence. Crudely put, Hollywood appeals to the senses, European films to the mind. LA GRANDE BOUFFE is an almost archetypally European movie - a Franco-Italian co-production, directed by a noted auteur, Marco Ferreri, and starring arguably the three greatest of all European actors, Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret. It features allusions to philosophy, art history and literature, and is confined, Bunuel-like, to the single set of a decaying town mansion. It is also about four middle-aged men stuffing themselves to death, blocking toilets until they messily explode, and, er, breaking wind. Ferreri treats his theme of excess - food, sex, self-pity - with an almost Oriental restraint, matching lengthy, static long shots so dense with detail and so darkly lit that it's often difficult to make anything out, to extreme close-ups, pitilessly exposing yet also strangely moving: a bit like Ozu filming Fellini. It's hard to know how to recommend this film - and I do, very strongly. Four professionals - a cook, a pilot, a TV producer and a judge - convene at the latter's unused mansion to spend a weekend non-stop eating a prodigiously elaborate feast made from the choicest meats: many prospective meals are walking about in the garden. We gradually learn that they have come here to die, but Marcello is unable to continue without sex, so they hire some prostitutes, as well as inviting a local, seemingly innocent, teacher, who is soon revealed to have appetites equal to any of the men. And so the men eat. And eat. And eat. They sometimes have sex, watch antique 'erotic' slides, drive cars, get sick. But mostly they eat. They even have competitions to see who can eat the fastest. This, ironically, does not sound very appetising for the viewer. There is no narrative drive for instance - any conflict possibly brought by the pure, innocent Andrea, a symbol of life in an atmosphere of decay, to whom Phillipe proposes marriage, are quickly dashed by her own taste for depravity. The men decide to die, and we watch them do it. The film begins with a methodical introduction to all four characters, and ends as methodically picking each one off. So what is the film about? Is it an allegory - a group of fairly representative French bourgeois gathered in a knackered mansion with a sparse, dying garden, might suggest so. But an allegory of what? The decline of French masculinity, patriarchy, capitalism? The judge and TV producer especially are examples of the most powerful, potentially corrupting forces in Western society, the law and the media. The women all escape and survive, although the closing shot of Andrea returning to the home is highly ambiguous. BOUFFE is very Bunuellian, from the EXTERMINATING ANGEL-like idea of bourgeoisie trapped in a mansion (figured in the inability of Marcello to leave in his sportscar, doomed to drive up and down the avenue), to the profusion of animals, observing the men's descent into bestiality, as they grunt and hoot and growl, and become fatal slaves to their appetites. Is it a study in decadence - there are many shots framed like grotesque parodies of Renaissance paintings; that optimistic project is flatulently shot here. There are allusions made to both Boileau - the father of French neo-classicism - and Brillat-Savarin, whose Physiognomy of Taste is a famous combination of philosophy and gastronomy which the four men take to nihilistic limits. Is it a death knell of film, as the parody of Don Corleone suggests, as four old men watch slides like a corruption of early cinema? I don't know. But for me the pleasures were many. The home itself, stuffed with so much bric-a-brac you can barely make out the characters. The fragmentary motifs returning in the coolly formal style - the replaying of certain scenes and shots; the repetition of the inchoate, beautiful, yearning tango music, which is connected to one character but shifts as he becomes a ghost. The museum of the dead culminating in the extraordinary, triangular shot of the sprawled Ugo, with Marcello and Michel behind him. The limitless, ingenious, grotesque variations on sex and food. The gross comedy. The genius compositions. The colours. The sight of three actors who have starred in some of the 20th century's supreme artistic achievements running from faecal rivers, and putting the rump back into rumpo.

• Eric B

  
  "La Grande Bouffe" ("The Big Feast") is grandly overlong, considering it devotes 130 minutes to what amounts to a one-line plot (four men set out to eat themselves to death). This strange Marco Ferreri project gets labeled a black comedy, but where are the laughs?… More
  "La Grande Bouffe" ("The Big Feast") is grandly overlong, considering it devotes 130 minutes to what amounts to a one-line plot (four men set out to eat themselves to death). This strange Marco Ferreri project gets labeled a black comedy, but where are the laughs? Beyond some spectacular fart jokes (the sound effects are strikingly realistic), this is a film centered on discomfort rather than humor. Certainly, the cast isn't the problem. The esteemed Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret and Ugo Tognazzi play, respectively, a pilot, a TV host, a judge and a chef who meet one weekend at a country estate. But their cheerful getaway seems more and more peculiar, once time passes and we realize that the gang just never stops eating. Endless consumption of presented gourmet dishes accounts for most of the movie. So, unless you're keen to spend two hours watching some fine actors gnaw on every sort of greasy, gloppy, sticky food imaginable (do bread or vegetables appear onscreen at all?), expect to become reacquainted with your gag reflex. Even the sex scenes (naturally, the guys hire some female companions) are mechanical and unappealing. The film's repulsion factor would be more forgivable if the characterizations were solid. But these also disappoint. Little explanation is offered for the suicidal bent of these otherwise successful men. Their interest in prostitutes and free love suggests a parallel between their sexual and gastronomic appetites, but the script doesn't dig beyond this idea's surface. Luis Bunuel could have done better.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic][color=purple]"La Grande Bouffe" is a French/Italian movie from 1973 about four successful middle-aged men - a judge, television star, chef and airline pilot - who get together for one weekend in an ancient chateau to eat and eat and eat some fabulous… More
  [font=Century Gothic][color=purple]"La Grande Bouffe" is a French/Italian movie from 1973 about four successful middle-aged men - a judge, television star, chef and airline pilot - who get together for one weekend in an ancient chateau to eat and eat and eat some fabulous dishes. And because he cannot go more than ten minutes without having sex, the airline pilot convinces his friends to call in some prostitutes...[/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#800080]Now that basic plot(minus the sex, of course) reminds me of the recent documentary, "Super Size Me", wherein Morgan Spurlock decides to live for a month simply on McDonalds and films the damage this is doing to him. Now I have not seen and have no wish to see "Super Size Me" because it does not satisfy my two conditions to see a documentary: 1) Is it about a subject that I'm interested in? & 2) Can I learn something or glean some insight? I eat fast food, I know it's not good for me and the point being? I have free will that allows me to do something that may not be healthy for me.(Like smoking for example which I don't like but I'm not about to tell smokers what I think of it.) In a more extreme fashion, the characters in "La Grande Bouffe" are enjoying a weekend in a manner I would not act on. But sometimes, a filmmaker will make a movie about characters who act in a way we do not approve of.[/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#800080]"La Grande Bouffe" is perhaps one or two wrong moves away from being a gross-out comedy but it is saved from this ignoble fate by a dream cast(Marcello Mastrioanni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Phillippe Noiret). Also, the characters being middle-aged lends a sense of mortality to the proceedings.[/color][/font]

• Panta O

  
  Today was the third time I watched this movie over 40 years span! And it's still delightfully wickedly funny! This French-Italian film directed by Marco Ferreri deserves much more than it received from the audience. I still wonder why wasn't so popular in US because stars… More
  Today was the third time I watched this movie over 40 years span! And it's still delightfully wickedly funny! This French-Italian film directed by Marco Ferreri deserves much more than it received from the audience. I still wonder why wasn't so popular in US because stars like Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret, should be famous there as well. They are from the top of the European acting class! And they showed why are they on the top. Marco Ferreri won the FIPRESCI Prize given by the International Federation of Film Critics at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival... and here on RT there is no rating for it!? Sad... In 2 hours and 15 minutes you have an avalanche of life happening around you in the story of four friends who gather in a villa for the weekend with the express purpose of eating themselves to death! Black humour, lots of indulgence, regrets, questions and half answers... Sex and overeating - is that what the life is all about? Watch this movie, and let me know!

• Dimitris S

  
  I love the sickness of this movie in accordance to one deliciously made,let's say burger.Craving for abundance isn't similar with desire for equilibrium,vanity soon comes and she's definitely uninvited...

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