Film variations on culinary art between the sublime and the grotesque

Abstract

Abstract

 This article discusses narratives dealing gastronomy in cinema from the perspective of aesthetic categories of the sublime and the grotesque, in its contemporary developments. At first, four paradigmatic films are critically commented: the Danish Babette's Party (1987) by Gabriel Axel; the Mexican Like water for chocolate (1992) by Alfonso Arau;  La Grande Bouffe (1973) of the Italian Marco Ferri; and, still, The cook, the thief, his wife and the lover (1989), by the British Peter Greenaway. To end with a Brazilian case study, the film Stomach (2007), by Marcos Jorge, is explored in terms of the visual manifestation of tangibility and synesthetic prevalence, by associating the ethics of revenge with the two great pleasures of life: food and sex. In the films analyzed, we emphasize the ways in which human actions are marked by the ethics and aesthetics of food, with its social and moral consequences, in the most diverse latitudes and longitudes.             

Keywords: Cinema; Gastronomy; Aesthetics; Sublime; Grotesque