“Vulgarity is raised to the level of art in La Grande Bouffe. Marco Ferreri, for too long a director whose disturbing allegorical works have been confined to the festival circuit, should now win some international acclaim for a film that can mean almost anything one cares to choose but that is a law unto itself, a vision of mankind so bawdy that Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Rabelais would quail before it. Four men and a voluptuous female repair to a strange house in Paris for what they euphemistically describe as a ‘gastronomic seminar.' Butchers deliver carcasses of the finest meat; no expense is spared to ensure that the friends will be able to ingest to their hearts' delight. Eating is an obsession with these men; they eat in the car en route to their meeting; they eat in the kitchen as they prepare their meals; they even eat during the sexual act (which is performed repeatedly and hilariously, with the additional aid of two prostitutes and a cramped Bugatti belonging to Marcello).

“Each of the friends emerges from a different walk of life. Together they symbolise a modern civilisation whose pleasures have become a business. But they forget about old Mother Nature. Slowly, inexorably, she wreaks her revenge. Michel perishes in his own excrement, Ugo expires while devouring a monstrous paté.... Eventually only Nicole remains, wandering through the garden while delivery men hurl sides of veal in all directions.”