DelicatessenHey, everybody needs somebody...and everybody needs to eat; but not everybody needs to eat somebody, although the butcher Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) of the eponymous delicatessen would have you think otherwise. See, he and his tenants in the ramshackle apartment building he seems to be the leader of--due to his managing of the most important commodity in this apocalyptic future, which is food--have been complicit in his procurement of the impossible to come by: meat. Thing is that meat doesn't grow on trees--unlike the other foods stuffs used as currency; he has to attain this celebrated culinary indulgence via more creative means.
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Enter Louison (Dominique Pinon)--a former clown, forced into retirement after the slaying of his partner, answering to a job advert in the (miraculously still running) newspaper for a handyman at the behest of the butcher. Louison is down on his luck; he has to trade his normal shoes for cab fare--his bag of lentils must not cover the tip--but he works hard for his keep. The butcher sizes him up--for reasons only we can fathom with dramatic irony--and puts him to work while he goes about chopping meat, and screwing his beautiful girlfriend, Mademoiselle Plusse (Karin Viard) on their squeaky bed. Louison mostly stays out of they way of the other tenants, but offers to show off some of his circus tricks to a pair of rambunctious kids smoking in the hall. After intercepting a package for the butcher's daughter, Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac)--much to the embarrassment of the blowhard postman (Chick Ortega)--from the starved tenants, Julie finds she takes a fancy to Louison, even inviting him up for tea. Only, while Julie's feelings may be genuine, it is also propelled by her sympathy and pity for the inevitable fate of Louison at the hands of her cleaver-savvy dad. Julie wants to end the cycle, but also finds charm in Louison's innocent pleasantness, his kindness in the face of world--at least the small world of Delicatessen--which has fallen into depravity and madness in the wake of whatever devastation has finally succeeded in overrunning the Earth. Louison eventually wins the trust of Mademoiselle Plusse, after helping her fix the bed and retrieving her unmentionables from the kids with the aid of his boomerang-styled utility knife, which he calls "The Australian". All while this plot unfolds, the other threads of madness unravel around this soggy structure. A pair of older guys share an apartment, making toys which they craft to sound like sheep when turned upside down, and one of them has a crush on a married woman in another apartment, who hears voices telling her that he is no good for her. Convinced she is crazy, she tries to arrange for elaborate ways to kill herself, failing constantly, as she is patronized by her husband, who holds some kind of well-to-do job. Another family is down on their finances, and have to make sacrifices--literal pounds of flesh--in order to cover the rent. There's even a nutball who lives in a flooded apartment, so he can catch snails to eat. One little apocalypse, and everyone goes completely loony.
It's never clearly spelled out just what kind of calamity hit the Earth in Delicatessen, but it is understood that the soil is ruined, and people can't seem to grow anything any more. And while the idea of cannibalism seems an acceptable evil to the residents of this apartment--most of them, anyway--it hardly seems like a sustainable form of sustenance in any form. Louison makes a comment to Julie about how he doesn't believe that people are evil, only circumstances make them so. It's really the central question of the film: is the butcher--and by association, his accomplices--evil, or are they forced to eat people to survive? The answer is clearly the former, contrary to Louison's naive assertion, evidenced by his stockpile of corn and other edible properties. Or maybe the world has simply forgotten that things like corn or lentils are food, and have become accustomed to fighting one another to get by in life. Perhaps that is another musing for our own world, and the lengths to which we go to screw someone over to get ahead, when there must be a simpler way. The newspapers are generally only good for wrapping the meat, since they are little more than propaganda to stir up hatred for the Troglodistes, a mysterious group of guerrilla rebels lurking beneath the city streets in the sewers, but that is how we find out about them, and the disdain the cannibals have for them. Julie recalls that old saying--"the enemy of my enemy"--and recruits the vegetarian contras to abduct Louison, thus saving him from his fate on a plate. But they aren't a terribly competent army, and their incursion into the apartment leads to one more element of the boilerplate of craziness threatening to bubble over. Co-directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the small, insular world of Delicatessen--like the world of another film by Jeunet, Amélie--means that we spend a lot of time with a few characters, getting to know their unique idiosyncrasies and quirks, like characters in a play. Louison's varied performances are funny circus acts, but they don't always get a laugh; but he is clever, and maintains an optimistic (or at least determined) mindset throughout his unusual stay in this cannibal condo. There is a brief spell when we suspect that the butcher might very well change his tune toward Louison--he worries, like some of his more fervent clients, that delaying will mean that others will become too attached to him, and not want to "ice" him when the time comes. But the butcher had finally found a world where his talents and lack of moral guidance are rewarded, and he's not about to let some clown derail his new world order. Louison better keep on his toes, even if they're encased in oversized clown shoes.
Recommended for: Fans of an off-beat comedy, mixing end-of-the-world sci-fi with Soylent Green-esque revelations about the nature of humanity, while still managing to be quirky and funny in a joyously silly way. A good, black comedy as dark as blood sausage. Bon Appétit!
It's never clearly spelled out just what kind of calamity hit the Earth in Delicatessen, but it is understood that the soil is ruined, and people can't seem to grow anything any more. And while the idea of cannibalism seems an acceptable evil to the residents of this apartment--most of them, anyway--it hardly seems like a sustainable form of sustenance in any form. Louison makes a comment to Julie about how he doesn't believe that people are evil, only circumstances make them so. It's really the central question of the film: is the butcher--and by association, his accomplices--evil, or are they forced to eat people to survive? The answer is clearly the former, contrary to Louison's naive assertion, evidenced by his stockpile of corn and other edible properties. Or maybe the world has simply forgotten that things like corn or lentils are food, and have become accustomed to fighting one another to get by in life. Perhaps that is another musing for our own world, and the lengths to which we go to screw someone over to get ahead, when there must be a simpler way. The newspapers are generally only good for wrapping the meat, since they are little more than propaganda to stir up hatred for the Troglodistes, a mysterious group of guerrilla rebels lurking beneath the city streets in the sewers, but that is how we find out about them, and the disdain the cannibals have for them. Julie recalls that old saying--"the enemy of my enemy"--and recruits the vegetarian contras to abduct Louison, thus saving him from his fate on a plate. But they aren't a terribly competent army, and their incursion into the apartment leads to one more element of the boilerplate of craziness threatening to bubble over. Co-directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the small, insular world of Delicatessen--like the world of another film by Jeunet, Amélie--means that we spend a lot of time with a few characters, getting to know their unique idiosyncrasies and quirks, like characters in a play. Louison's varied performances are funny circus acts, but they don't always get a laugh; but he is clever, and maintains an optimistic (or at least determined) mindset throughout his unusual stay in this cannibal condo. There is a brief spell when we suspect that the butcher might very well change his tune toward Louison--he worries, like some of his more fervent clients, that delaying will mean that others will become too attached to him, and not want to "ice" him when the time comes. But the butcher had finally found a world where his talents and lack of moral guidance are rewarded, and he's not about to let some clown derail his new world order. Louison better keep on his toes, even if they're encased in oversized clown shoes.
Recommended for: Fans of an off-beat comedy, mixing end-of-the-world sci-fi with Soylent Green-esque revelations about the nature of humanity, while still managing to be quirky and funny in a joyously silly way. A good, black comedy as dark as blood sausage. Bon Appétit!