By Robert Scucci
| Published
What do you get when you combine Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory with Soylent Green and the kind of culinary bedlam that happens in 1985’s The Stuff? This is a deep pull, so I’ll just give you the answer: 1988’s Consuming Passions, a dark satire about what happens when chocolate is made of people, and the corporation behind it doesn’t care because it simply wants “profit line to go up” no matter the cost.
Consuming Passions thrives on its absurdity, but is also oddly prescient because it locks into the enshittification we’ve been seeing across the board with consumer products for the better part of the last decade. When it comes to food in this context, the ingredients become increasingly questionable, but it really doesn’t matter so long as people keep paying for it and the shareholders are happy.
These days, it starts with a 12-pack of soda costing $14, but the vision that Consuming Passions offers is infinitely more bleak: we’re just eating people now and calling it a sweet treat.
PASSIONELLES ARE MADE OF PEOPLEEEEE
Consuming Passions takes place at a chocolate factory gearing up to launch Passionelles, an expensive new confection that probably tastes exactly like every other piece of chocolate until Ian Littleton (Tyler Butterworth) accidentally sends three workers into a vat and gets them incorporated into the recipe. Mr. Farris (Jonathan Pryce) and Graham Chumley (Freddie Jones) are understandably concerned about this development, especially after realizing the contaminated batch has already shipped. Then the customer feedback starts rolling in, and wouldn’t you know it, accidental cannibalism is testing extremely well with consumers!
Unfortunately, recreating the recipe without feeding another human being into the machinery proves difficult, which is where Consuming Passions starts asking some very reasonable questions about how much human life is worth when quarterly sales are looking this good. Customers like Mrs. Garza (Vanessa Redgrave) want more Passionelles badly enough that simply discontinuing them becomes an increasingly inconvenient solution. And as you would expect, “stop selling the chocolate with people in it” isn’t the slam-dunk business decision you’d think it would be.
Come With Me, And You’ll See, A World Of Pure Cannibalization!
The best way to describe the chocolate factory in Consuming Passions is what you get if Willy Wonka stopped caring about pure imagination and only considered the bottom line while building his chocolate empire. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of ethical concerns taking place at Wonka’s stomping grounds that any OSHA representative would have a field day with, but the key difference is that Wonka is a master of deception and clearly has a screw loose, while everybody within Consuming Passions’ fiction is operating based solely on greed and quarterly projections.
I can’t think of a better film that captures exactly what could go wrong when quality control goes out the window and the only thing motivating anybody is the almighty dollar. After watching this one, you’ll find yourself reading every single ingredient statement, wondering what multiple-syllable words are actually fancy ways of saying “people are in this.”
What really makes Consuming Passions such a treat to watch, though, is how straight everybody plays it. The recurring gags feel lived in, like every time somebody blows past the security gate, knocking the arm straight off and causing a ruckus because they’re in a hurry. The film is fully aware of its own absurd messaging, but it still feels like warning shots are being fired. What’s most alarming is that the further we barrel down the information superhighway toward an AI-dominated technological hellscape that would make any sane person wish simulation theory was real, Consuming Passions’ premise doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
Consuming Passions tastes like a comedy, but has a distinct cautionary aftertaste. It’s saying, “If any corporation could get away with feeding you people, they probably would.” Soylent Green offers a more grounded, bleak version of the same future, while Consuming Passions leans into absurdity to get exactly the same point across. Civilization isn’t nearly as far gone in this black comedy, but if the world everybody’s inhabiting here continues down the same path, not even Charlton Heston’s whistleblowing could save the day.
As of this writing, Consuming Passions is streaming for free on Tubi.
