Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.
30 Jan The Big Feast (1973)
Sit, Eat
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 al 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.
Posted in 2008
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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