Delicatessen (1991)

Delicatessen is a French comedy horror film first released in 1991, directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  The film stars Pascal Benezech, Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus and Karin Viard.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


In a grim, post-apocalyptic future, food is so scarce that people are forced to resort to cannibalism in order to survive.  On the ground floor of a dilapidated apartment block, Monsieur Clapet runs a butcher’s shop which is sourced by the building’s tenants.  Unemployed circus clown Louison turns up in response to Clapet’s ad for an odd-job man.  Unbeknown to Louison, he is the latest unfortunate to fall for the butcher’s ruse and is destined to end up as meat on the tables of Clapet’s starving customers.  The butcher’s plans are upset when his daughter Julie falls in love with Louison.  To save the ex-clown from her father, Julie enlists the help of the troglodytes, a group of vegetarian rebels who live in the town’s sewers.  Unfortunately, the troglodytes abduct Clapet’s mistress by mistake, leaving Louison to fend for himself as the butcher decides the time has come for him to be sliced and diced...

Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s debut feature took the world by storm when it was first released in 1991, proving to be that rarest of phenomenon: an art house film that became an immediate mainstream success.  With its distinctive design and sharp, ochre-saturated cinematography, its zany humour and collection of oddball characters, Delicatessen was bound to be a cult hit, endlessly parodied in commercials and helping to totally redefine the look of sci-fi films in the 1990s, bringing a new sense of unreality and greater visual impact to fantasy cinema.  The film was not only a major box office hit across the world, it was also almost universally well-received by the critics.  It was nominated for ten Césars in 1992 and won four awards, in the categories of Best Screenplay, Best Design, Best Editing and Best First Work.  There had never been a film like Delicatessen before, and there probably never will be again.   This is a film that takes strangeness to new heights and almost makes it an artform in its own right.

A résumé of the film’s story gives a somewhat false impression.  With its references to cannibalism and mad cleaver-waving butchers, you might think this was a vicious horror film, in the familiar slasher vein, but far from it.  Delicatessen is a joyously exuberant farce, of the typically French variety, consisting of numerous moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity and some genuinely eye-popping set-pieces.  The former includes the famous bed squeaking sequence (in which the butcher’s love-making exploits provide the tempo for the other tenants’ routine activities, building to a devastating tyre-bursting crescendo), whilst the best example of the latter is the scene in which the hero escapes the butcher’s knife by flooding the entire building (liberating an army of frogs in the process).  Whilst they may appear somewhat dated by today’s standards, the film’s special effects (including some early digit effects and daring use of computer-controlled photography) were state-of-the-art at the time - remarkable when you consider that the film was made on a relatively modest budget.  (Caro and Jeunet spent many fruitless years trying to secure financial backing for the film.  Apparently, no one wanted to produce a film in which the characters used grain as a substitute for money).  

The main appeal of Delicatessen is its ensemble of eccentric characters, who are played to comic perfection by an extremely talented cast.  Dominique Pinon brings the appropriate mix of humour and pathos to his portrayal of the hero Louison, and is beautifully complemented by his co-star Marie-Laure Dougnac, who is both funny and endearing as the myopic love-lorn Julie.  Jean-Claude Dreyfus revels in the meatiest role as the cleaver-swinging butcher, a part that elevated him from the status of a fairly unknown character actor to national celebrity.  Karin Viard was near the start of her illustrious career when she appeared in this film, in a role that could hardly be further from the one she is now known for, in highbrow films d’auteur.  The film’s strangest character, the man who lives like an amphibian in a flooded room inhabited by snails and frogs, is played by none other than Howard Vernon, a highly regarded actor who is best known for playing the German officer in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Silence de la Mer (1949).  It’s a strange life being an actor.  One minute you’re playing a member of the master race, the next you’re up to your knees in freezing cold water with ping pong balls in your eyes, doing lizard impressions.

Prior to Delicatessen, Caro and Jeunet had made a handful of short films together, of which the best known is Le Bunker de la dernière rafale (1981).  Caro’s background was in graphic design so it is no surprise that he (supported by cinematographer Darius Khondji)  was most responsible for Delicatessen’s unusual look, which, with its strong visual contours and weird ambiance has something of the classic French bande dessinée feel to it.   Jeunet’s input was more that of the conventional metteur en scène, directing the actors - which he did by using some improvisational techniques, such as telling one actor to do something of which the other actors were unaware, to get a spontaneous reaction.  Caro and Jeunet worked together on one further feature - La Cité des enfants perdus (1995) - before pursuing separate careers.  Jeunet would be asked to direct the fourth entry in the Alien series, Alien: Resurrection (1997), and would score a notable worldwide hit with his subsequent Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001), which owes a great deal to the groundbreaking design and sheer off-the-wall bizarreness of Delicatessen.

© James Travers 2011

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