A wonderfully Rabelaisian revel in basic human functions and a bawdy reverse version of the lower rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – shelter, sex, food, excretion.

Ferrari is a precise master of his art. It’s a narrow, highly idiosyncratic art, but one to be cherished for its mordantly wicked and peculiar take on the human condition. This is probably one of his more accessible and amiable romps, with a good balance between the allegorical motifs and scatological humour common in his work.

The premise is tight – a gluttonous challenge to eat-yourself-to-death between four men consisting of good food, wine, women and bodily fluids or more simply: eating, fucking and shitting yourself to extinction- and gleefully played by the leading actors. The film is sometimes a rather-too-obvious critique of capitalism and bourgeois mores, but never leadenly polemical and for all its faults an agreeably sly dig at decadence, albeit sat firmly on the potty of low comedy.

Ferrari maintains a deliciously sick sense of decay from the moment the men enter the rundown grounds of the house through to the unfolding gastronomic-induced death plans. Using a fine colour palette of grey/brown and blue/yellow tones, especially for the exteriors – witness the twilight arrival of meat from the back of the chilled van (utterly off-putting) – an unhealthy atmosphere is created, underlining the sickly engorgement, fleshy sex and faecal expulsions – not quite human foie gras, but not far from it.

I suspect some of its appeal lies in the casting of esteemed French and Italian actors willing to act the naughty school boys playing with very grown-up toys in a cacophony of tit and fart jokes, but it’s a fascinatingly decadent descent infused with a knowing, if ultimately depressing, world view.

It all ends in a whimper, or perhaps a fart, but where do you go? All over the floor by the looks of it.