Delicatessen (DVD)

With an overcast and smoggy yellow backdrop, in the realms of an empty and desolate vision of a world, stands an old and decrepit building: The Bricks are crumbling into the gutters, the rain is seeping through the floorboards, the tobacco stained paint is peeling of the walls like dry skin, but the Delicatessen is still open for business. The scene is set; The Butcher (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) makes his entrance: He is beef, as they say over here, a bulky colossus with heavy arms, a thick brow and not too much activity within the brain cell department. He wields his chopper (that's a knife, if any of you where wondering), scraping and sharpening its blade. ...  Read the complete review

I first saw Delicatessen about five or six years ago when I was living in shared housing. I returned from the pub with one of my housemates who decided that what we needed with our fish and chips was a good, funny film. So this is what he produced. I think I can safely say that I have only ever seen one film that was stranger than this one. That's not to say this film is no good. On the contrary, this is a stunning piece of film-making from beginning to end. To cut a very long story short - something for which I'm not normally known - Delicatessen takes place in a large block of flats, post-holocaust, France. The landlord, ...  Read the complete review

I've revisited this 1991 film recently and felt it deserved a bit of recognition. Co-directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who would go on to direct Amelie amongst other things) and Marc Caro, this black comedy is set in an unspecified post-apocalyptic time period where every day items are scarce, none more so than food. The story centres around an apartment block in France with a delicatessen on the ground floor, run and owned by the landlord of the apartments, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). He and the other tenants are cannibals who live off the meat of unsuspecting odd job men. Following the murder of the last one, he places an advert in the paper for another, ...  Read the complete review

Delicatessen is another black comedy from Jean-Pierre , creaters of The City of Lost Children. Its set in a time after a nuclear war where civilisation has all but collapsed. The film revolves around a gloomy tenement building, the lives of tenants and their butcher landlord. He's no ordinary butcher as in this world food is in short supply. So, they make the best out of what they've got- unfortunate passers-by and eventually tenants themselves. Many of them really enjoy the human food. Dominque Pinon, he of the many clones in "the city of lost children", wanders into their world and falls in love with the butchers daughter, ...  Read the complete review

I'll admit I saw this after Amelie, hopeful that it would be the same kind of wonderful experience. I was certainly not expecting a sci-fi dystopia. Set in an apartment building that is home to many a strange individual, the Delicatessen operating on the ground floor has found a resourceful if not slightly unconventional way of supplying its customers with what they crave the most in a world that is starving; fresh, tasty meat. When an ex-circus performer turned janitor moves in (played by Dominque Pinon) he is immediately pegged to be next for the butchers slab. Unfortunately for the butcher, his daughter and the janitor fall head over heals for one ...  Read the complete review