La Grande Bouffe [DVD]

This is an amazing, unforgettable film - well, it's 30+ years since I first saw it. At the end, when me and my girlfriend left the old original Electric Cinema Club on Portobello Rd, the audience split between those who dived straight into the chippy two doors down or crossed the street holding their noses.

One weekend, four successful but terminally bored men meet at the large house of one of them, a truck arrives loaded with a fantastic range of food, from whole deer carcasses to foie gras and they set out to eat themselves to death. Michel Picolli's character is a master chef and gets stuck in to cooking one gargantuan, sumptious meal after another. At one point, against the rules, Marcello Mastroiani's character calls in a couple of hookers to add a bit of female interest. He finds a novel use for a spare piston of the old Bugatti he finds in a shed... The girls soon leave, declaring the guys to be disgusting, depraved. The eating goes on. AND ON AND ON. A large and plumptious school teacher, who has been showing her children the tree in the garden under which some famous writer had his thoughts, is invited back for dinner. She gingers up the flagging fellows by declaring loudly, "J'ai faim!" And on they go, eating.

It's beautifully shot, in rich, dark colours, there are brilliant jokes and in the end ... the teacher wants seconds.

"A wild boar, ready for the most subtle marinades...two superb deers with soft eyes, flesh imbued with the perfumes of the Clouves forest...ten dozen semi-wild guinea fowls fed on grain and juniper...three dozen innocent Ardennes cockerels...one dozen chickens from and around Bresse...a hindquarter of beef from the rich pastures of Charolais...five dozen innocent salt-meadow lambs from Mont Saint-Michel..." Since this is a family site I won't describe the delights of the prostitutes they've also ordered. You'll see those soon enough.

When these four sophisticated men, ennui leaking from their souls like the fluid draining from those two superb deers, speak of kissing the oyster, it's not the oysters they have in mind. In fact, what they seem to welcome is death by satiation. If food and sex are humankind's two glorious distractions from boredom, these four men discover a way to check out with a belch and a groan. It will be glorious, endless dinner at the unused Paris manse of one of them. The Whore Menu will be a masterpiece..."a sauté of fat and lean given by four gourmet epicureans for three young ladies in twelve courses. Crayfish a la Mozart on a bed of rice with sublime Aurore Sauce...soft-shell lobster served as a first course..." The dinner will be memorable...four jaded men, three whores and Andrea (Andrea Ferreol), a schoolteacher. And we're only 44 minutes into this more than two-hour movie. One thing for sure, There'll have to be breakfast

What on earth are we to make of the tired lives, mounds of kidneys bordelaise and pointless exits of Marcello the pilot (Marcello Mastroianni), Michel the television big shot (Michel Piccoli), Philippe the judge (Philippe Noiret) and Ugo the chef (Ugo Tognazzi)? Much can be read into this movie, and much has. I suspect that the more some people natter on about its meaning, the less meaning it has. What it does have, however one-note the movie becomes, is the intense flavor of La Grande Black Comedy. The four men become clueless comedians in their own overly nuanced sophisticated pleasures and jaded feelings. If we didn't quickly realize that Marcello, Michel, Philippe and Ugo weren't just grownup, spoiled children, stunted in their approach to women as well as food (and acted by four superb artists), La Grande Bouffe might deflate under its own weight. Even as the whores depart, we still have the schoolteacher, a woman of unexpected delights and comforts. She brings a certain wholesomeness to sex on a kitchen table. Like an encouraging pairing of wine and cheese, she makes sex and food a pleasure...and she pairs well with Philippe for a while.

Some fine black comedies may end sadly; they don't all need to end with irony. I'll admit that the last line in the movie, "Is it all right like that, Ma'am? Meat in the garden?" comes close.

I can still remember the first time I saw this movie, even when it is a few decades away It is one of thos that every so often I get an urge and want to review it again. It is a movie which is not just great entertainment because of the excellent actors, but also because it has a simple message: life is flimsy and in the end you do with it what you like.