La Grande Bouffe

Food and Flash
Surprisingly, this middle aged boys' weekend-out is much more sexy than many pure-porno movies, but a bit boring for stupidity of a realm screened.

Sex and gluttony!
A small group composed by well definite personages, (linked by their Epicurean approach) each one of them representing a symbol of power and notorious status in the society - a judge, a chef, a pilot, a TV producer and a female school teacher join for a gastronomic weekend in a Parisian home. This great plentiful repast will be complemented by an unexpected guest: The Death' s Angel. What it going to come will be certainly one of the most impressive portraits of degradation and decadence ever seen in the screen until this date. An admirable metaphor of the boring and the lack of illusions to live.

Flatulence Fantasique!
You will never forget seeing this movie. Like another reviewer I have carried images from this film in my mind for decades. It's not that it's a great movie, there have been better "food" movies - but nothing that has the black humor and the joyful vulgarity of this one. Philippe Noiret's infantile Judge is a wonderful performance and the entire cast holds nothing back. Philippe Sarde's haunting theme is superb - especially in the death by flatulence scene. Funny, farcical and oddly thoughtful beneath the somewhat contrived artiness that is French filmmaking of the 1970's.

There can be only one.
Some movies sear an image into your brain for ever. Like the end of "The Wild Bunch" or the beginning of Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" - "Looks like we're shy one horse". "No, you brought two too many".I saw "La Grand Bouffe" over 20 years ago. I still have the image in my mind of the guy eating the two blancmanges at the end of the picture before he dies.This movie is surreal, bizarre and wonderful. If we go to movies to see images and things we have never seen before, then this movie is spectacularly successful.There is no greater movie about food and death.

One of the most provocative movies of all times
I like this movie for its outrageousness and its ability to combine an allegoric vision and a creeping reality: what are we doing with our lives? Where will this boredom of modern living lead us to? The idea of four friends engaging in an all-out "Grande Abbufatta" (the original title in Italian) is quite a perceptive allegory of what happened to the so-called Western civilization as a whole. It seems it has nowhere to go but to a formidable blow-out since its very beginning... I'm not a big fan of Marco Ferreri's work. I think he was quite irregular in his output, but when he hit the mark he was simply second to none. For me, this "La Grande Bouffe" and "L'Ape Regina" ("The Queen Bee" or "The Conjugal Bed", 1963, with Ugo Tognazzi and Marina Vlady) are among the best examples of black comedy ever to be given us by filmmakers anywhere in the world. His choice of actors couldn't be better: Mastroianni, Piccoli, Noiret and Tognazzi will be forever among the greatest in this trade, and in "La Grande Bouffe" all of them give us one of the finest of their efforts ever. I was very happy when I knew this movie was being released on DVD because I had seen it twice in movie theaters: in 1978 (the Italian-spoken version) and in 1981 (the French-spoken version, the one on this DVD). I was hoping the DVD version would bring both. I was quite disappointed to see that it brings only the French-spoken version, with English subtitles. It would have added much more to my pleasure if this DVD version of "La Grande Bouffe" would come with both Italian- and French-spoken versions, and also with Italian and French - besides English - subtitles. If I'm not mistaken, it's possible to do this with any DVD (if not, please correct me), for I have many DVDs at home with a choice of several languages on the audio tracks and an equally wide variety of subtitles' choice. Also, the music that Philippe Sarde wrote for this movie has haunted me since the very first time I saw "La Grande Bouffe". I have been hunting for this movie's music all over the world to no avail for decades now (can anyone out there help me on that? Was this music ever issued on tapes, LPs or CDs anywhere?). I was hoping that on DVD they would provide us also with a choice of hearing this sensuous and intriguing music without the dialogues, but this too was denied to us viewers. For these two reasons only (lack of a wider choice of languages and subtitles, and lack of a separate track for the music) I don't give this DVD a 5-star rating.