★★★★★★★ Film review reprint☆ Original translation★★★★★★★
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Overall Rating: 2/4 stars
Marco Ferreri's “The Grand Bouffe” is to gastronomy as “The Exorcist” is to “Song of Bernadette,” which is to say eat before you go, you won't be hungry afterward. It's the story of four friends who gather for a weekend of eating and wenching that gradually reveals itself as a suicide pact. They eat themselves to death. And not metaphorically ; no, they eat themselves to death literally before our very eyes, and not a morsel of the feast goes undocumented.
Marco Ferreri's Bliss is to the gourmet, as The Exorcist is to the Song of the Virgin, It's all about binge eating before you die so you'll never be hungry later. The story is about four friends having dinner and recruiting prostitutes together on weekends. Gradually, the audience realizes that they have met to seek death together. They are going to eat themselves. It's not a metaphor, no, they really want to eat themselves to death in front of the audience, and there's not a single bite that hasn't been filmed.
In a way, the movie works like “The Iceman Cometh.” After four hours trapped in Eugene O'Neill's run-down Irish saloon with a menagerie of defeated alcoholics, we don't exactly rush out for a drink. Only “The Iceman Cometh” had a humanistic substructure, and something to say about its characters; “The Grand Bouffe,” as nearly as I can tell, is essentially just a chronicle of gluttony and self-hate.
In a sense, the movie Kind of like "Here Comes the Ice Man". After being trapped in Eugene O'Neill's shabby Irish salon for four hours with an alcoholic beast, we don't immediately feel like running out for a drink. The only difference is that the subculture to which "Here Comes the Ice Giver" belongs is more capricious. Let's talk about its role settings. From what I can see, Bliss is just a chronicle of overeating and self-hatred.
I say as nearly as I can tell, because the movie arrived here after creating the cinematic sensation of its year in France. It opened at the Cannes Film Festival attended by gleeful controversy; the critics chose up sides and attacked it as either (a) the most disgusting and decadent film in the history of France or (b) a savage, radical attack on the bourgeois establishment.
I just said from what I saw because the film had a huge emotional repercussions in France at the time. He was the opening film of that year's Cannes Film Festival, and it ushered in a delightful controversy. The critics' final assessments were all extreme, either slamming it as the most disgusting and depraved film in French cinema history, or as a vitriolic, radical attack on the bourgeois establishment.
Catherine Deneuve went to see it with her lover at the time, Marcello Mastroianni (who is one of its stars) and would not speak to him for a week afterward, or so it is said. When you are Deneuve and Mastroianni, however, perhaps there is little need to speak. In any event, the movie went on to become (according to the publicity) the largest-grossing release in the history of Paris, all the while inspiring fistfights and insults on the Champs Elysees.
Catherine Deneuve and her Then-lover Marcello Mastroianni (who played one of the protagonists in the film) went to see the film together and refused to speak to him for the next week, at least that's what I heard. , if you are Deneuve and Mastroianni, you have nothing to say. In any case, the film went on to become the largest screening in Paris history, while also inciting people to attack and abuse the Elysee Palace.
I give you this background in order to be fair, because “The Grand Bouffe” didn't leave me so much excited as exhausted. There is no doubt great significance in the way the characters talk about themselves, each other and French society; there is a double-reverse message to be found, I suppose, in the utter contempt with which the prostitutes in the movie are treated. The sight of bourgeoise pigs being pigs is no doubt, from a certain point of view, an attack on their pigginess .I
tell you these backgrounds to make the film review more fair and objective, because "Bliss Feast" didn't excite me that much, but rather tired watching it. There is no doubt that the way the characters discuss themselves, each other, and French society is meaningful; I admit that there is a lot of double meaning to be found in the extreme contempt for prostitutes. In a way, the fact that the pig-like bourgeoisie eventually became a pig is undoubtedly an attack on that pig-like state.
Those would be the things the French intellectuals would argue about, but for me the film was more of an experience than a treatise; like “The Exorcist,” it doesn't have philosophical depth when you think about it, but in the theater it hammers your sensibilities. It's decadent, self-loathing, cynical and frequently obscene. But there's one thing you can say for it (and my colleague Terry Curtis Fox did, on his way out of the theater): “This film reaffirms my faith that it is still possible to be offended by a film.”
These may be for the French intellectuals to dig up, but for me, the film is more of a dissertation than an experience. Like The Exorcist, when you really think about it, it doesn't have much depth, but when you watch it in theaters, it stimulates your senses. It's decadent, it's self-hatred, it's cynical, and it's lewd from time to time. But the least you can say about this movie (this is what my colleague Terry Curtis Fox said when he walked out of the theater): "This movie convinced me again, and now audiences are still offended and irritated by the movie."
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May 2, 2013.
First time translating a movie review O(∩_∩)O haha~
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