Bored with life and their careers, four friends with an appetite for excess — a TV host (Piccoli), a chef (Tognazzi), a pilot (Mastroianni), and a judge (Noiret) — move into a remote, well-appointed villa with three prostitutes, embarking on a decadent, salacious attempt at gastronomic self-destruction. What a way to go!

Distinguished by its first-rate cast of leading Italian male actors, Ferreri’s jet-black social farce concerns the efforts of four jaded Parisians to indulge in the ultimate hedonistic act: eating and screwing themselves to death. Taking aim at civil society and the grosser aspects of conspicuous consumption (quite literally, too, especially with its emphasis on bodily functions), “Bouffe” is by turns absurd, grotesque, outrageously funny, and abjectly sobering. But it is never less than a riotous feast.