Twitch-O-Meter: Eat to live. Don’t live to eat. Bon appétit.

5. Ravenous
There is something particularly off-putting about watching people during the simple act of eating. Certainly there have been a large number of films that have used this for one purpose or another, but personally, the criminally overlooked Ravenous is the first one that springs to mind. Perhaps due to the genre-mashing nature of the film (which is part comedy, part cannibal horror, part snowy western) or the subject matter (the Wendigo myth of gaining the strength of one’s enemies by eating them) this film withered quickly at the box-office during its 1999 release. It probably didn’t help that the film was plagued with some production troubles including uncooperative weather and a director replacement in the early stages of production. Nonetheless there are those of us who love the film warts and all. Those who enjoyed The Aussie art-western The Proposition can see perhaps a germ of Guy Pearce’s character on display here, as a disgraced war-hero. Heck, any film that opens with an ominous quote from Nietzsche immediate followed by “Eat Me!” has already gone a goodly way towards goofy likability.

The opening scne, has the tone immediately set from the off-kilter score from Blur’s Damon Albarn over a shot of the waving American Flag. Cut to a dinner in honour of a war-hero of the Mexican-American war. A long table of officers in full ceremonial regalia sit down to a meal that consists of a single, plate filling blood-red steak. From the reaction shots of the senior officers and the flash backs of Guy Pearce’s character to the actual battle, it is immediately obvious that he is a bit of a coward and not a hero at all. But before we can go there, all the officers dig into the meal in synch to the sounds of plate clanking and chomping. Heavy breathing also dominates on the soundtrack to add a note of nausea echoed in the visuals. That would be close-ups of the meat and the chewing and the queasiness on Pearce’s face which culminate with our hero running from the room and vomiting just as the films title slides on the screen.  This doesn’t even get to the joy of Jeremy Davies broken leg being licked by Robert Carlyle or the great Jeffry Jones making his particular brand of Soup.

4. Taxidermia
György Pálfi’s grand guignol of the grotesque has more on its plate than just eating, but consumption and body imagery play a gigantic part, particularly in the middle section of the film (try to parse the three puns in that sentence).  Words simply cannot describe what is on display in this film:  Tubs of lard, pig execution, and eating candy bars with the wrappers still on just scratch the surface (bestiality, self-disembowelment and penile flame-throwing if you wish to go a little deeper into the miasmatic morass).  Best leave this act of self discovery to one-self.  Certainly tied for the #1 film on this list for a singular vision executed to the utmost.  One that is difficult to attempt to view a second time due to its stomach-turning smorgasbord. 

3. Fast Food Nation
Richard Linklater’s signature talky style is integrated into a strangely wonderful adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction book of investigative journalism and agitprop muckraking on the fast food industry, Fast Food Nation, has simply one of the greatest introductory lines on this list:  “There is shit in the meat.”  That line alone singlehandedly trumps the whole of Morgan Spurlock’s similarly themed Super-Size Me.  Because the novel linked many aspects of American culture and disparate institutions into the machine of selling the soul of that nation back to itself in re-constituted parts (see also Soap in Fight Club), so too does the film. However, it does it in a non-documentary format, using Linklater’s signature style of connecting a disparate collection of individuals through chance encounter and loads of conversation and ideas.

Now, this film was savaged pretty hard by the mainstream critics. Slagged as too obvious, too boring, not fun, not witty. I think that was entirely by design. Take for instance the fast food marketing executive played by Greg Kinnear.  For much of the film, he is sort of the moral center, slowly understanding the spiral of ‘efficiencies’ in running a business that gradually grinds the human element out of the equation. The film sharply mirrors this, in one of the most cutting scenes where he is broken of his idealism and just walks right out of the picture. Other threads, which mirror the talking points in the book, involve immigrant labour in the meat packaging plant (which supplies the burger patties for the fictional fast food company in the film), the fast food employees and dead-end nature of the McJob are filled either with fresh young faces or the occassional cameo of a known face. Take the gross out moment of Bruce Willis slurping BBQ sauce off his fingers between big bites and conservative common sense.  The attraction to this film however, is watching how Linklater and Schlosser’s mourning for what America may have been at one time, and how painful it is to watch it wither away. Fast Food Nation is as much a lament for roads not traveled in American Society as it is about the compassion-less corporation. It may seem obvious, but the relentlessness with which the film is delivered was still ignored by the nation at large.  Oh yes, if seeing someone drop into the meat grinder or a graphic tour through the kill-floor doesn’t turn you off the collective burger joints of America, well then nothing likely will.

2. The Stuff
Ah, Larry Cohen.  How much we love you.  For the uninitiated, take his Killer-Yogurt-From-Space film from 1985, with the wonderfully succinct title:  The Stuff.  Take the delicious tagline from the film:  “Are you eating it, or is it eating You?”  Really, if you are a regular Twitch reader and have not had the glory of witnessing Michael Moriarty, Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino take on an ocean of mobile goop or original SNL Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Player Garret Morris being eaten alive from the inside (see still left) then what are you doing reading this column.  Get thee to a cult video store (or heck, amazon.com) and own this little B-film diamond in the rough.  A light satirical tone permeates the film, particularly the rise of the killer food-stuff as a major marketing success (“Can’t get enough.  Of the Stuff!”) and zombie-like consumer slavery (“Enough is never enough”) to, of all things, plain-white-yogurt.  The body craze of the 1980s, industrial espionage and other things smack dab in the middle of the Regan Era are skewered (making The Stuff a bit of a kissing cousin to John Carpenter’s They Live); but really the film gets to showcase neato-on-the-cheap practical effects that are sorely missed outside of schlocky Japanese flicks like Machine Girl and Meatball Machine.  Proving that scary movies don’t have to be all that scary or particularly smart (note the film is started by someone discovering a white stuff bubbling up out of the ground and the first thing they do is taste it!  Eat your heart out Steven “Meteor Shit” King or James “Slither” Gunn!) to provide their own form of goofy entertainment.  And more importantly that “Everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while.”  Yea, I can’t get enough of The Stuff.

1. Gaau ji (Dumplings)
Whether you prefer Honk Kong director Fruit Chan’s (Even his name is great for this topic!) short film version included in the Three Extremes anthology (and easily the best of the three) or his almost immediately released feature length version of the film is almost besides the point.  They are both great, thanks in no small part to superstar cinematographer Chris Doyle. The result is a visually stunning take on the age-old quest for eternal youth, paired with the twin sins of envy and vanity.A woman is losing the attentions of her rich husband and seeks a solution from another woman whose dumplings are said to be ‘therapeutic.’ With unnatural youth of course comes a price, nothing so blasé as damnation, but more a look into the mirror of ones own lack of character for going to these lengths for personal ego and conceit.

The movie takes a fascinating look at Chinese myths of miracle potions and the odd little delicacies consumed to increase virility. But there is more to it than that. A woman’s connection to her self-image and it being tied to self-worth are contrasted against a variety of maternal instincts (creating) and human desires (consuming). As mentioned above, the original anthology was titled Three Extremes, and for good reason. There is some disturbing imagery here. You may never eat a Chinese dumpling again after watching this film. It dwells deep in the dark and primal depths of human need, its rich visual palette lulling a false sense of security when the movie pounces with well timed intense imagery. The film is not for the faint of heart, but at the same time, to write it off as pure genre is a mistake as well. Dumplings is edgy piece of entertainment with an eye for colour, and a mind for delicate subtext with I assure you, not even Roy Lee will touch for an American remake.

(In closing, or perhaps to cleanse the palette, Honorable Mention should go to Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, not only because it is a grotesque film in its own right, set almost entirely in a restaurant, but to give away the main course would be a bit of a spoiler!)