Mixing post-apocalyptic sci-fi with black comedy and a dash of romance, DELICATESSEN is a dish that may be too exotic for some tastes, but for others it will make their mouths water.
The film begins with a man dressed in garbage (Pascal Benezech) trying to escape from his apartment in a trashcan. However, his cannibalistic employer Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) catches him first and butchers him. In this futuristic world, food is scarce, especially meat. So Clapet the butcher sells human flesh to the tenants that live in the apartments over his deli. He keeps hiring new handy man as a front for getting his next victim.
Clown Louison (Dominique Pinon, AMEILE), after losing his partner in a tragic incident, takes the job next. The apartment building is full of eccentric characters including: Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac), the nearly-blind daughter of Clapet; the voluptuous Mademoiselle Plusse (Karin Viard, TIME OUT), who is having an affair with Clapet so she can get free food; brothers Robert (Rufus, METROLAND) and Roger (Jacques Mathou, THE HAIRDRESSER'S HUSBAND), who make those little boxes that when turned over sound like cows mooing; Aurore Interligator (Silvie Laguna, JEFFERSON IN PARIS), a tormented woman who hears voices in her head that drive her to try elaborate suicide attempts; Georges (Jean-Francois Perrier, VINCENT & THEO), Aurore’s snobby husband; the crude couple Marcel (Ticky Holgado, THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN) and Madame Tapioca (Anne-Marie Pisani, LES BOYS II); the Tapiocas’ troublemaking boys (Boban Janevski & Mikael Todde); Marcel’s mother-in-law (Edith Ker); and the strange man in the basement known as the Frog Man (Howard Vernon, ZOMBIE 5), who lives in a water-filled apartment with frogs and snails. I should also mention the gun-toting Postman (Chick Ortega, WINGS OF DESIRE), who is in love with Julie.
The core of the tale is the budding romance between Louison and Julie, who tries to get her father to spare Louison’s life. However, Clapet is getting a great deal of pressure from the other tenants about their meat supplies running out. Julie doesn’t know how to tell Louison about her father, so she goes to an underground resistance group called the Troglos for help in kidnapping Louison thus saving his life.
As this main plot unfolds, we peek into set pieces involving the other tenants. The funniest is Robert pinning over Aurore, who unwittingly lures him in as an accomplice in one of her suicide attempts. Some of the sub-plots work better than others. The Frog Man just seems weird for weird’s sake and serves no purpose to the story besides adding more color.
Speaking of color, the film’s dark, rich color palette adds to the otherworldly feel. Like the “chaos theory” segment in LOST CHILDREN, DELICATESSEN has a marvelous sequence where the actions of the tenants combine into a rhythmic song that builds to a big climax. It’s the ingenuity and originality of this scene that spills over into every other scene. Directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (CITY OF LOST CHILDREN) have a flare for bringing original visuals and concepts to the screen. Jeunet’s films always look fresh. DELICATESSEN is a bizarre, but sweet, surreal journey that tickles our funny bones with its marrow-sucking mayhem.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
