Increasingly inventive as it progresses, Jeunet and Caro's fast, funny feature debut entertains from sinister start to frantic finish.
Delicatessen (1991)
Runtime: 1 hr 39 mins
Synopsis: After years of working successfully in commercials and music videos, French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet make a splashing feature-film debut, DELICATESSEN, a hysterical exercise in style. Scripted by comic book writer and frequent Caro and Jeunet collaborator Gilles... After years of working successfully in commercials and music videos, French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet make a splashing feature-film debut, DELICATESSEN, a hysterical exercise in style. Scripted by comic book writer and frequent Caro and Jeunet collaborator Gilles Adrien, the story follows a sweet-natured clown, Louison (Dominique Pinon), who moves into a run down apartment building with a delicatessen on the ground floor and falls in love with the butcher's daughter, Julie Clapet (Marie-Laure Dougnac). When it turns out that Julie's father (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is actually butchering human beings and selling the meat to the carnivorous tenants of the building, Julie must decide if she will remain loyal to her father's business or expose the truth in order to save Louison from being the next victim. Taking place entirely inside, underneath, and on the roof of the delicatessen, the film uses an old pipe that runs throughout the building as a channel of communication for its characters. Caro and Jeunet have a flair for visual communication and comedy that overflows in DELICATESSEN, keeping viewers engaged in the film even when the style seems to swallow the plot. In one of the most mimicked scenes of the 1990s (most notably in commercials), the directors brilliantly choreograph a bizarre event in which the separate activities of each of the hotel's tenants--a couple making love in a squeaky bed, a man painting his ceiling, a woman playing the cello--become hilariously rhythmic and synchronized. This scene spawned an entirely new cinematic language, making DELICATESSEN one of the most auspicious directorial debuts of the '90s. [More]
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Starring: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard, Rufus
DVD Info
Release:
Feb 8, 2010
DVD Features:
- Keep Case
- Widescreen
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 - French
- Subtitles - English, Spanish
Additional Release Material:
- Audio Commentary - Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Co-Director
- Featurettes - 1. Fine Cooked Meats: The Making of DELICATESSEN
- 2. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Archives
- Trailers - 1. Original Trailer
- 2. Teaser
Reviews
A hugely enjoyable film, Delicatessen welds comedy and magic into a bizarre, grotesque fantasy of an oddball dystopian future.
A fair bet for cultdom, a lot more likeable than its subject matter suggests, and simply essential viewing for vegetarians.
With their detached, sardonic and decidedly sick slant, Jeunet and Caro have served up a burnt-to-a-crisp feast.
There are no characters to care about or remember afterward -- just a lot of flashy technique involving decor, some glib allegorical flourishes, and the obligatory studied film-school weirdness.
A zany little film that's a startling and clever debut for co-helmers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.
Part macabre horror, part romantic drama, part childlike fable, this ingeniously original French film defies categorization, but is successful on all of these levels, which may explain why it has become an international cult classic.
Delicatessen uses its aggressive stylization and capricious visual contraptions as a form of imprisonment.
..takes the gruesome, grisly business of murder and cannibalism and makes of it something quite poetic and quite funny.
Sure, it's funny, it's gross, it's diabolically, unabashedly idiosyncratic, but it's also an epic ode to that most fundamental expression of human endeavor -- creativity.
An ingeniously funny film with a surprisingly sweet romance at its center.
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