Jean-Pierre Jeunet is the man behind AMELIE but ten years before that he made the equally quirky, if not more so, DELICATESSEN, a film about the lives and loves of the bizarre characters living inside a run-down apartment building. A film more French in feel and tone you couldn't wish for, and this is a movie with style to spare. In many ways it reminded me of the novels of the great 19th century writer Emile Zola, who often shone a light on society's foibles in a similar way.Saying that, although I liked this film on a superficial level, I found it difficult to love it. It's a definite case of style over substance, and there isn't really much 'meat' to go with the plot. The villain of the piece is a caricature and there's a sense of inertia dragging through the early and middle scenes; it only really picks up at the admittedly impressive climax. Still, the cast are good, the humour is droll, and there's a part for Franco regular Howard Vernon, so it can't all be bad.

In a post-apocalyptic France of the future, meat has become exceedingly rare. So much so that it now can be used as currency. The residents of an apartment block above a deli have come to depend heavily on the strange man, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) employed as their butcher. Then one day an entertainer named Louison (Dominique Pinon) comes to the place to accept a job as a handyman. Louison finds himself quite taken with Clapets' sexy daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac), but his new life may not be what it's cracked up to be. He may have some other purpose in the building other than odd jobs.At its best, this completely off the wall and extremely stylized French take on post-nuke and cannibal cinema is one of the most original films of its kind. The co-directors, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, give "Delicatessen" a striking visual design, largely avoiding cool colours like blue (although there are occasional flashes of green); the colour palette consists of a lot of yellows, oranges, reds, and browns. It's a clever hook, but also making this a worthy entertainment are the incredible energy and the consistent tone of dark, and farcical, humour. There's nothing else this viewer has seen that is quite like "Delicatessen", and that can only be a good thing.The performances themselves are very stylized, with the well chosen actors going for broke a lot of the time. Pinon and Dougnac are appealing in the leading roles. Also leaving a big impression are Dreyfus, Karin Viard, Ticky Holgado, Anne-Marie Pisani, Howard Vernon, and especially Silvie Laguna as the troubled Aurore, driven to stage very elaborate suicide attempts by "voices". Caro can be seen on screen as Fox, one of the cave dwellers.Caro and Jeunet are able to reach some appreciable heights of lunacy here, matched by the wonderfully memorable imagery throughout.This one gets a solid recommendation.Eight out of 10.

Delicatessen is a strange little treat from the French director Jean- Pierre Jeunet, the director of other great modern French films like Amélie. But instead of the melancholy of Amelie, Delicatessen instead focuses on very dark humour, being based around a cannibalistic butcher who lures in victims to his apartment block so he can kill them and sell them as meat to his cannibalistic tenants. He does this in a post apocalyptic world where food appears to be scarce and people have become more willing to show their barbaric nature in order to survive.And this is where the films focus lies. For it is less interested in the post apocalyptic world, but instead focuses on the characters and the various tenants who live in the building and their dark humour . A majority of the characters will have their own distinct personalities that make them quite memorable. There's one tenant who keeps quiet throughout the film, keeping an inventory of frogs and snails to represent the side of fine French cuisine in contrast to the more barbaric man eating side of the film. Then there's the girl who constantly keeps trying to commit suicide and failing in the most darkly comedic ways. It's with characters like these where the film does gain its personality and it's many awkward chuckles that are somewhere between comedy and tragedy.The film also succeeds at creating both likable protagonists and despicable antagonists. Louison (the lead protagonist) is an extremely charismatic young boy who is both very kind to all the tenants in the building and very skilled being a clown and displaying a nice introductory scene using bubbles to entertain th kids of the apartments. Then there's the lead girl, Julie, who is very brave working to stop Louison from being butchered. Similarly, Louison often protects her making their relationship extremely dependant on one another.Then the antagonist Clapet is also very memorable. The film makes it clear that he is a despicable man within the first five minutes on screen as he commits brutal murder, but feels no remorse about doing it, instead appearing to even enjoy it. At times he's slightly overplayed, but this assists in making sure he stands out as the most insane, amongst an already insane cast of characters.The style the film is shot is also very interesting as for the most part the entire story is confined to the apartment building. Through this it helps to create both a claustrophobic feeling and makes the characters feel even more detached from the rest of the world keeping the story very self contained. Also the cinematography uses a fairly dark tone, assisting the film to get a distinct look and help it stand apart from other apocalyptic futures.However, whilst everything that was in the film remained effective, throughout the film I couldn't help but feel there was lost potential. For example, whilst what I saw of the apocalyptic world was interesting, I didn't feel like we saw enough of it. Presumably what they were going for was to create some mystery as to the world, with there being a great deal of uncertainty as to when the film was even set with the likes of black and white TV's being used. But I feel the film would have been stronger if they had expanded on certain elements of the world like creating some bizarre shows on television or hints at why there is such a food shortage.It also feels like the film would have benefited from a longer run time. It took a lot of nice scenes to slow down and build up the relationship between the two leads showing them playing instruments together to create a more natural relationship. But this carries with it the problem that the plot ends up feeling more rushed with less time to make the different characters arcs complete. For example, tenants such as the Landlords mistress feel like good characters but don't get enough time for us to learn enough about them.Though the major missed opportunity that I see in the film is we don't really see any of the characters eating any of the human meat, despite the entire film centred around cannibalism. We see it being given to them and there reactions to getting it, but it does feel like a missed opportunity by not showing them actually eat it. It's an opportunity to get a good thrill, but it never seems like the director used it despite the several opportunities he could have.But in spite of this it remains a good film with a distinct style. It's certainty worth the watch because it is something different. With its nice shooting style and interesting characters it delivers some entertaining humour and dark visuals.

Weirdly delicious film, I cannot define this in a better way. Filled with idiosyncratic characters and eccentric scenes, this film is all about these characters above all else. In a building where a butcher heads a group of people and invites tenants on his terms and conditions, he acts with a weird sense. The building is dilapidated, the time frame is not mentioned and is left for ambiguity, the actions of characters are mostly out of place and hard to find reason. Yet, all of this makes an interesting a fun film. The fun is derived by the color toning of the film which is partially sepia. Also, the fun lies in the camera work by Darius Khondji. The whole setup and production design is done peculiarly to make us curious. From the first frame, of the film I was kept curious till the end as to what is happening on screen and where will it lead. For sure, the screenplay is gripping and it proves that however a story may be but if told interestingly, it can be great fun to watch.The editing is another department where the film knocks out a punch. It is meticulous and all the way meant to be interesting I believe that in a film if there is never a dull moment then the credit should go to the editing, and rightly so I do for this film. The actors are not known to me considering that this is french film. Yet, all of them are superb in their roles. From a tenant, to the head the looks they give, the expressions they showcase,. the tone of voice they speak in, are all instigating curiosity on the lines of fun and humor. Jean Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro have given us a treat of black comedy and sarcasm embedded with fun and frolic of unpredictable characters. These directors have to be commended for this work which is indeed one of the fine cult movies of 1990's. French Cinema in itself is years ahead of contemporary cinema in other parts of world and this film just proves that. A 4/5 for a delicious film