The Monsters' Dinner

With more than an intertextual nod to films such as LE GRAND BOUFFE (1973) and THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER (1989), the MONSTER'S DINNER focuses on four bourgeois characters, none of whom actually have any names but are known by their initials. They spend an evening together talking about sex, masturbating, sucking one another's blood, eating meat like cannibals, beating up a little child, laughing maniacally at the casual violence taking place outside their apartment, and indulging in racist and sexist chat. Director Ramin Matin uses the entire film to satirize capitalist society and its tendency to destroy everything as well as sucking the blood out of their victims as well as themselves. Not much happens in the film; what we see on the whole is the four protagonists talking among themselves. The violence is implied rather than stated: gunshots ring out on the background, the characters are heard vomiting in the bathroom while the conversation continues uninterrupted in the living-room. Shot in deliberately washed-out colors, the film portrays a dark world with absolutely no hope of redemption. While understanding the director's perspective, I think the satire is a little obvious; although only eighty-five minutes long, THE MONSTER'S DINNER begins to drag after an hour, almost as if the screenplay had run out of things to say. Shot in English - rather unusually for a Turkish film - its message should be comprehensible to anyone.