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La Grande Bouffe
La Grande Abbuffata / The Big Feast / The Great Feed / Das große Fressen / Blow Out
France/Italy 1973
produced by
Vincent Malle for Mara Films, Films 66, Capitolina Produzioni Cinematografiche
directed by Marco Ferreri
starring Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi, Andréa Ferréol, Solange Blondeau, Florence Giorgetti, Michèle Alexandre, Monique Chaumette, Henri Piccoli, Maurice Dorléac, Simon Tchao, Louis Navarre, Bernard Menez, Cordelia Piccoli, Jérôme Richard, Patricia Milochevitch, James Campbell, Eva Simonet
written by Marco Ferreri, Rafael Azcona, dialogue by Francis Blanche, music by Philippe Sarde
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
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Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Marcello (Mastroianni), Michel (Piccoli), Philippe (Noiret) and Ugo
(Tognazzi), four best friends from all walks of life, but all well to do,
convene at the mansion of Philippe's late parents for a "food
seminar", for which they have delivered frozen meat by the truckload,
live chicken and whatnot. Soon it turns out the four of them are not so
much into eating but into feasting. Problems arise though when womanizer
Marcello claims he cannot go one night without shagging a woman - and thus
the guys hire three prostitutes, plus Philippe invites school teacher
Andrea (Ferréol) he has taken a fancy to. This leads to a really wild
party, but eventually the women have to find there's a darker side to
things, these four guys don't just want to party hard, they want to eat
themselves to death. In shock, the prostitutes leave the estate, but
Andrea really gets sucked into the men's way of thinking, and to get into
the swing of things, she soon has sex with each of them (or at least tries
to). Things only take a turn to the more serious when Marcello tries to
leave the estate but fails to start his convertible in a snowstorm and
freezes to death, and the next day Michel dies, and though the symptoms
suggest it might be due to overfeeding it might just as well have been a
broken heart. Philippe, Ugo and Andrea are suitably shocked - but they've
gotten too far down on the downward spiral to stop now ... La
Grande Bouffe is certainly not a film for everyone, it's decadent,
it's vulgar, it's at times intentionally disgusting, and it's
mean-spirited - but that's exactly why it works, it's a no-holds-barred
exercise in bad taste, a film that came without precedent and that was a
slap in the face of about everyone, but in a good way (and still feels
that way now), and that needs to be seen with an open mind and a
predilection for the macabre. And be advised, even though the movie is at
times disgusting as can be, it's also very well-directed and well acted by
some of the biggest European moviestars of the day, so it's aynthing but a
kitchen sink oddity. Totally worth your time, but you have to be in the
right mindset to watch it all the same.
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amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find La Grande Bouffe at adultvideouniverse.com
