FEED
2005

Able thriller about cop becoming obsessed with investigating a website that may be responsible for force-feeding fat women to death. A disturbing Australian import picked up by TLA Releasing (www.tlareleasing.com), experienced director Brett Leonard (Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity) tries to raise some questions amid the mayhem as to obsession, body image and societal ideals. Looks great for being shot on high def video, skillfully made and flashy: jump cuts, slowdowns, color filters, etc., but ultimately I imagine it’ll be a hard sell to your average Joe, unless you like seeing a guy jack off (from behind) as he overfeeds a morbidly obese nude woman (in a realistic fat suit), after first making her say “Feed me.”
Philip is an Internet cop, searching the web for illegal activity. He busts the German sex cannibal at the beginning of the film, who tells him “There are all kinds of love.” The feeder/gainer subculture, as our cop explains to us, is a sub/dom relationship, where one gets so fat they can’t take a shit (don’t have to see that, thank goodness) or trim their calluses without the feeders. The feeders make sure the women continue overeating so that they will put on weight. But this guy’s going farther than that. These fat-bottomed girls seem to be disappearing.
Mark, the villain toying with the cop investigating him, is really good (reminds me of Daily Show’s Jon Stewart); the cop’s good, too, just not as showy. Consumption is evolution; Mark tells us, and the biggest eaters are the most highly evolved. The film is a sustainable growth parable, a comment on super-sized American culture not necessarily meant to be consumed in one sitting; I had to stop after a while and digest it.
Heavy use of poppy songs like Yummy Yummy Yummy backing up grotesque actions, including Lips Like Sugar while he pours chocolate syrup over fattie’s body, and Tainted Love played while transposing a scene of weighing-in of the immense Deirdre with one of the cop’s skinny girlfriend shoving her snatch in his face and saying, “eat it.” By third time the technique is starting to feel formulaic, but film is surprisingly compelling despite this shorthand and its overall graphic nature.
The script seems to go out of its way to show the similarities between “normal” relationships between consenting adults, as shown by the comparison of the cop’s relationship with the feeder/gainer relationship. In the deleted scenes, more of Deirdre and Mark’s relationship is shown; he waits on her and tells her she’s beautiful and paints her nails. In contrast, the cop and his nympho GF seem more dysfunctional and distant from each other.
Of course, Deirdre doesn’t know that Mark’s fattening her up so that the website subscribers can bet on the hour and date of her death from cardiac arrest or another obesity-related condition.
The fat suit that they came up with, shown in the extras, is quite good, and I would think, hard to watch for most people. I’d certainly not find it erotic, I must say. It’s quite an accomplishment, after all these years of slasher movies, torture films and J-horror, to have something new come out of the woodwork to make you feel uncomfortable, but this is, like I said, something that will make you feel oogy.

-Hysteric Eric