Delicatessen

This is a superb film. The look and design of the sets is unique and the narrative is certainly original!! I would place this film along with others like Being John Malkovich as it really did make me sit up and take notice. There are some truly great set pieces in the film particularly when the whole house starts to get into the same rhythm as the love makers on the top floor ( ripped off by an American Beer company I note in an advert ) and the botched suicide attempt too - hey I said it is darkly amusing!! I would say that there is not a weak performance amongst the cast in this evocative tale of futuristic cannibalism!! Basically, trying to describe this film makes it sound too bizarre but I highly recommend it to anyone who likes originality and their humour on the edge of darkness.

Melding the perfect mixture of the visual grace of a silent film with a modern soundscape and bearing a twenty-first century post-apocalyptic sardonic sense of humor, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's "Delicatessen" becomes one of the finest contemporary films.

This pitch black comedy delves into cannibalism and oddball romance in the same breath with equal gusto and therefore feels horrific, humorous, and haunting all at once. Every frame is a wonder of detail and originality that reinvigorates even the most jaded and long-time film viewer with the sense of rediscovering the art form. This is film-making in the highest regard worthy of praise, awe, and multiple viewings.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro crafted a near-perfect film in Delicatessen, an almost indescribably unique French comedy concerning cannibalism, troglodytes, a circus clown, myopia, suicide, and sex -- and it's all set following some kind of apocalyptic catastrophe. An extraordinary group of actors (with faces worthy of Fellini) play the desperate residents of an apartment where one's next meal could literally be the neighbor from down the hall. The elastic-featured Dominique Pinon, as the clown turned handyman, is a joy to watch. Delicatessen is packed with Rube Goldberg-style set-pieces (I especially love the fixing of the bed spring as well as the rooftop battle during the television broadcast) that leave you breathless.

`The French,' said James Russell Lowell, `are the most wonderful creatures for talking wisely and acting foolishly that I ever saw.' And good old Henry Adams once said that what he disliked most about the French was their mind, their way of thinking. Why? Because, he said, the French were not serious.

France is not serious. It's an insult; and, it's a compliment. Once their proclivity for playing `Sidewalk Socrates' is understood, one can begin to enjoy them. Henry Adams loved Paris when he got past the surface: `France was not serious, and he [Adams] was not serious in going there.'

I say this by way of introduction to the French movie Delicatessen because, frankly, most French movies really bite. They have that bottom of the birdcage quality, which comes from trying too hard to be deep and philosophical, coming off as ineffably silly instead.

Delicatessen avoids all of that because it doesn't try to be serious. There's nothing pretentious about it. But it could be. It's an outrageously funny black comedy. Only the French, with the penchant for speaking wisely, and acting foolishly, could have pulled this off. It's almost a satirical caricature of French society as a whole.

Set in an apartment complex with a ground floor delicatessen, drifters check in, but don't check out – that is, until a former circus clown shows up. The owner's daughter and the erstwhile circus performer fall in love, throwing her father's brutally perfected supply `system' (fresh meat) all out of whack. The `process,' it seems, cannot tolerate exceptions to the rule, especially not such impractical sentiments as love.

Delicatessen has some outrageously comical setups. And best of all, the inhabitants are all laughable, each in their own way, from the murderous landlord, to his delicate little daughter named Julie. I won't spoil the fun for you by telling you any more. I urge you to find out for yourself.

Clever ideas and good notion of filmmaking are at the core of this movie, whose storyline is the smallest asset. But you won't really care when you see it, because even though the story isn't really elaborate, what you have here is one of the most original movies you'll ever get your eyes on. The setting is perfect, with no historic or geographic references, only an estranged building, which doesn't have a single straight normal tenant. The result is a magnificent work of actors, cinematography and set dressing, that makes the most of visual resources for a movie. The directors Jeunet & Caro show their true potential in this movie that will keep you glued with its naive-like comedy style, and its unique set of characters, which could generate a separate movie about each and every one of them. Magnificent, and truly original.