buffet libre (2026) Fantaspoa 2026

 Buffet Libre is nominally the story of a Chinese food restaurant that drifts into the realm of Mrs. Lovett’s pies. It is a very black comedy that about serving up your problems to unsuspecting people.  At the same time, the film is also trying to do more. The film is a biting, and in some ways devastating, look at how various groups and cultures look at each other.

We know we are not in a happy place when the film opens in the stalls of a market in a city and two people are discussing the Chinese family down the row. One woman said not to worry about the pigeons that are flying around because the Chinese are going to eat them, after all they will eat pigeons and rats and other creatures. The discussion is uncomfortable and reveals the divisions among the characters in the film.  The film then shifts further as focus on the Chinese family. Though the family isn’t wholly Chinese, the husband is Japanese so even between the couple there are cultural differences. The cultural differences between the couple focus into how the relationship gets warped as the pair play off each other as the situation, they find themselves turns dark. It becomes clear that despite the couple being in love there maybe somethings that love cannot overcome.

I know there is a lot of dark humor in the film but I didn’t find it funny. To be the clashes between the character left me disturbed and heartbroken as events and people spiral out of control, more so with each attempt to right the sinking ship. In many ways this film crushed me. It created a head space that I did not want to be in. That is a rave but it also lessens the chance that I will make a second effort to see the film again.

If you want to see about the chasms between people, and how, perhaps, we are all alone, this film is for you