Word: rabelaisian
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Died. Raymond Queneau, 73, influential avant-garde author whose linguistic pyrotechnics on everyday themes helped transform modern French fiction; in Paris. Trained in logic, psychoanalysis, mathematics and philosophy, Queneau wrote scores of poems and novels, including Zazie dans le Metro, a 1959 bestseller about the Rabelaisian exploits of an eleven-year-old nymph...
Ferreri has set out with a fierce will to challenge audience sensibility, and his Rabelaisian romp establishes new levels of rauchy foul taste in art house--as distinct from 42nd Street--porn movie fare. In manner and matter, Ferreri is working on a level that the makers of "Deep Throat" could not --and would not--aspire to, but his movie's lifelines are decidedly pornographic...
...across the U.S., while he is feverishly finishing his latest film, soon to be released, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). The relationship to Dr. David Reuben's bestseller is tenuous, and the movie will probably deserve an R rating (for Rabelaisian). In it, Gene Wilder plays a doctor madly in love with a sheep; and Allen plays, among other wonders, a sperm cell, a libidinous fail ure named Victor Shakapopolis, a spider, and a court jester caught by a king in the arms of a queen. For the film, Allen...
...Avildsen directs his actors in the same manner that a red light may be said to direct patrons. No matter. Pornography is customarily, in Nabokov's fine phrase, a copulation of clichés. Not here. Garfield takes this insanely, inanely plotted movie and lends each scene a Rabelaisian gusto and surprise. His movements are reminiscent of the hippopotamus in rutting season; his expressions are unique. Who else could register such dismay when he finds that he has been making love to a corpse? Who else could transmit such concern for the girl who replaces her lover with...
References to sex, booze and excrement, although hardly in the yuletide spirit, are nonetheless used for their Rabelaisian potential. Most do not bear quoting, but here is a mild example: EXTENDING THE SEASON'S GREETINGS AND EXPRESSING THE HOPE THAT OUR CARNAL RELATIONSHIP MAY CONTINUE FOR MANY YEARS TO COME. By buying nonseasonal cards, the frustrated shopper might even be able to vent the hostility that Christmas pressures frequently evoke. LET ME GET ANGRY JUST ONCE WITHOUT APOLOGIZING FOR IT would seem a suitable sentiment for family and loved ones, I DON'T LIKE YOU would...