Thursday 3 May 2007

Delicatessen (1991)

If you’re a fan of the bizarre, the surreal, the just plain weird, and you haven’t seen Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 1991 movie Delicatessen, then you should take steps to do so at once. All of the action takes place in an apartment building over a butcher’s shop in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Food is scarce, but the butcher has found a creative way to continue to supply his customers with meat. The inhabitants of the building are some of the oddest characters you’ll ever come across, and the movie gets progressively more surreal and more insane as it goes. There are plenty of bizarre images, and the occasional oddly beautiful one. Caro and Jeunet have a very distinctive visual style. And there’s also a rather touching love story in there as well.

I adored it, and thought it was every bit as good as their later City of Lost Children. Jeunet of course went on to direct the very successful, and absolutely superb, Amélie.

9 out of 10

1 comment:

Coton said...

I find in your blog the most of my favourite movies! ^^

I have seen Delicatessen when I was very young, and I instantly fall in love with it. Black comedy, Jeunet and Caro atmosphere (with Darius Khondji!): really a good movie.