Delicatessen

1991′s Delicatessen is a visually stunning, gripping and engaging French black comedy from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. The film is an inventive and creative look at the relationships and situations between members of an apartment building with a delicatessen on the bottom floor. Of course, it’s not really that simple.

Delicatessen is set in an unspecified time and place, but a quick gander at the surroundings and the overall mood of the film and we could place it in some sort of post-apocalyptic time frame that feels somewhat like 1950s France. In this world, food is in short supply and almost all of the animals have been hunted to near-extinction. Grain is used as a commodity now, as people trade with corn and small gadgets which are used as currency. It appears that everyone in the apartment building, save the butcher, is in the business of making useless novelty diversions.

The story revolves around the tenants in this apartment complex that is owned by the butcher. The butcher takes money from his tenants in exchange for rent and “food”. The food is human flesh, however, and the tenants and the butcher are always on the lookout for “fresh meat.” The butcher typically murders and serves the workers he hires to do odd jobs around the apartment complex. The tenants and the butcher have some sort of system worked out to prevent the butcher from murdering any of the tenants, as “rules” are explained and referenced in a few of the conversations.

Eventually, the latest worker arrives at the apartment complex and the tenants start salivating. The latest worker is a former circus clown, Louison, and he falls in love with the butcher’s daughter. A relationship develops and the butcher’s daughter tries to help Louison survive the multiple attempts to turn him into food. Eventually, Louison is helped to escape the complex with the help of an underground vegetarian terrorist organization.

Delicatessen is obviously very imaginative and bold, but it never feels offensive or forced. The love story is always played off as being very sweet and delicate, as the scenes between Louison and the butcher’s daughter have such intimate grace that the romantic tenderness between the two of them become the focal point of the tale. The film could have easily presented the plot in a dark, seedy narrative and headed in many conventional directions with the material. Instead, Caro and Jeunet elect to create a sort of glee to the material and draw on the use of color and comedic set-ups to drive the plot.

Delicatessen is effective as a black comedy and also as a tender romance, consistently straddling the line between being tender and dark. The film’s tone is highlighted by its use of brown and green, along with the constant haze, to draw upon the delicate nature of the plot and the simplistic creation of this whole other world without ever showing too much. It is a vision of the future, in a sense, without relying on the trappings that so many modern films divert to when there is no plot to speak of. Instead, Delicatessen draws on its intelligent script and its creative, bold characters to create its own vision of the future without spelling it out for the audience. This is a rare treat.

What works for Delicatessen is its off-beat humor, tender romantic interludes, strong and creative characterizations, witty script and its magical cinematography. It is a complete film in every sense of the world, leaving nothing and everything to the imagination all at once. It is a joy to watch and a miracle for the screen, causing eyes to widen and jaws to drop at the sheer audacity and beauty of the work of Jeunet and Caro. The film also won Caro and Jeunet the César in France for Best First Work.

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