Four affluent middle-aged men (Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret & Ugo Tognazzi) close themselves off in a château for a weekend of stuffing themselves with gourmet food. They are joined by three prostitutes and a school teacher. It gradually becomes clear that this is a suicide pact ... the four intend to eat themselves to death. I love this film. It's somewhere between Bunuel and "Salo" ... or a version of "Salo" that is not hijacked as an indictment of fascism and is perhaps closer to De Sade. What starts as a fairly sensual enjoyment of food and sex gradually transforms into a grim and tawdry march to death. The film doesn't blink, but it also isn't really condemning men for their bloody minded self-hating lust for pleasure. It's both satire and celebration in an odd way.

"A wild boar, ready for the most subtle marinades...two superb deers with soft eyes, flesh imbued with the perfumes of the Clouves forest...ten dozen semi-wild guinea fowls fed on grain and juniper...three dozen innocent Ardennes cockerels...one dozen chickens from and around Bresse...a hindquarter of beef from the rich pastures of Charolais...five dozen innocent salt-meadow lambs from Mont Saint-Michel..." Since this is a family site I won't describe the delights of the prostitutes they've also ordered. You'll see those soon enough. When these four sophisticated men, ennui leaking from their souls like the fluid draining from those two superb deers, speak of kissing the oyster, it's not the oysters they have in mind. In fact, what they seem to welcome is death by satiation. If food and sex are humankind's two glorious distractions from boredom, these four men discover a way to check out with a belch and a groan. It will be glorious, endless dinner at the unused Paris manse of one of them. The Whore Menu will be a masterpiece..."a sauté of fat and lean given by four gourmet epicureans for three young ladies in twelve courses. Crayfish a la Mozart on a bed of rice with sublime Aurore Sauce...soft-shell lobster served as a first course..." The dinner will be memorable...four jaded men, three whores and Andrea (Andrea Ferreol), a schoolteacher. And we're only 44 minutes into this more than two-hour movie. One thing for sure, There'll have to be breakfast What on earth are we to make of the tired lives, mounds of kidneys bordelaise and pointless exits of Marcello the pilot (Marcello Mastroianni), Michel the television big shot (Michel Piccoli), Philippe the judge (Philippe Noiret) and Ugo the chef (Ugo Tognazzi)? Much can be read into this movie, and much has. I suspect that the more some people natter on about its meaning, the less meaning it has. What it does have, however one-note the movie becomes, is the intense flavor of La Grande Black Comedy. The four men become clueless comedians in their own overly nuanced sophisticated pleasures and jaded feelings. If we didn't quickly realize that Marcello, Michel, Philippe and Ugo weren't just grownup, spoiled children, stunted in their approach to women as well as food (and acted by four superb artists), La Grande Bouffe might deflate under its own weight. Even as the whores depart, we still have the schoolteacher, a woman of unexpected delights and comforts. She brings a certain wholesomeness to sex on a kitchen table. Like an encouraging pairing of wine and cheese, she makes sex and food a pleasure...and she pairs well with Philippe for a while. Some fine black comedies may end sadly; they don't all need to end with irony. I'll admit that the last line in the movie, "Is it all right like that, Ma'am? Meat in the garden?" comes close.

This is a sort of adventure in shocking an audience. It failed with me because I've been exposed to so many more incisive things.But I like the way it is put together. It is a sort of "Love's Labors Lost" meets "8 1/2 Women." Though both those films came after, they are far superior.Four men gather in order to eat themselves to death via gourmet food. They attempt it in remote solitude, but love and sex intrude. First, we have some prostitutes, then a chubby local schoolmarm who falls for them all. The sex — with her — is tender, never hungry and significant. She becomes a sort of witness, our surrogate in the thing, watching as each of her lovers expire from life, because of determined living.There is a scene copied later a much better in "8 1/2 Women" where our woman masturbates an old man while he expires. There it is a gift; here a duty. And that's the problem — the thing has no poetry. Sure, there are plenty of attempted metaphors, but they all seem mechanical.The grand sweep has us with relationships as passion, passion as sex, sex as consumption, consumption leading to death. A meal late in the game is "ass tart." I think this could be done effectively and may have been done somewhere. But meanwhile, I recommend the later films.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Four men want to die. This is not a spoiler, it is essential information. On viewing the film again, I realized that the opening scenes are quite explicit: "Where are you going?" - "I have given you power of attorney". Four good-byes: from the restaurant, from the studio, from the airplane, from the wet nurse.Only it is not so easy. The men can't just eat themselves to death like they planned to. They need help.And help comes. Andrea Ferreol shares their food and more. She takes them to the edge - the moment where there is still a chance to turn around and continue living.The men die alone. The women survive: the prostitutes know when to pull out, Andrea walks away at the end. The food is great (I got very hungry!), the photography quite excellent and the dialog: just enough. Very relaxed, too. Mostly about food, recipes, small talk really. That's why it is essential to know and to remember what they are doing.Is it a good film? Absolutely. Is it "gross"? The camera does not look away. Not from the beautiful food, nor from the results at the other end of the digestive tract. It shows desires, ecstasy, fear and loneliness too. And it does show the big emptiness within the men. Too bad this emptiness cannot be filled by hors d'oeuvres, pate, fish, meat or elaborate pastries.