La Grande Bouffe - English subtitled
Marco Ferreri’s notoriously over-the-top social allegory and delirious explosion of bad taste about as a group of bourgeois who resolve to eat and screw themselves to death.
It’s a nauseatingly decadent suicide attempt, supplemented with three hookers and a spontaneously invited schoolteacher. LA GRANDE BOUFFE premiered at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Jury chair Ingrid Bergman was so shocked that she left the venue before the end of the screening. The visitors who stayed until the end treated the film to loud boos and hisses. In Italy the film was initially banned, with the result that bus trips were organized from Italy to watch the film in France.
LA GRANDE BOUFFE may no longer be as provocative as it was in 1973, but the morbid jokes are still funny and the criticism of Western eating culture is surprisingly topical. And of course there is that fantastic cast. Big stars like Marcello Mastroianni and Michel Piccoli were tempted by director Ferreri to participate – even under their own name – in this orgy of sex, vomit, diarrhoea and mashed potatoes.