Delicatessen

Director: Marc Caro, Jean Pierre Jeunet
Year: 1991






















In spite of a theme like cannibalism, Delicatessen is in fact a fairy tale, & is made like one would tell a fairy story. With large doses of humour, twisted maybe, & a happy ending as well, but that too not in the conventional sense of the term.
It tells the story of a world, rather an apartment block, with the butcher slaughtering humans to cater to his tenants. People are killed for meat, people who die naturally are also cut up & eaten, even relatives are not spared. A circus performer down on his luck comes to work for the butcher, responding to an 'advertisement' in an employment newspaper. The butcher intends to get some work by the young man, before cutting his head off so that the meat supply for the tenants can be replenished. But then things go wrong, as the love blossoms between the butcher's daughter & the young man & then to save her man, the girl goes & joins hands with this (literally) underground group of rebels who are enemies of the cannibals. Thrown in between the main story are sequences involving a woman tenant of the building who is determined to kill herself to get rid of the 'voices in her head'. Each time she devices novel & innovative techniques to get the deed done but in comic & ironic strokes of (bad?) luck, fails every single time. Especially the final time, when she tries to make everything foolproof, aiming a gun at herself, while standing on a chair with a noose around her neck, at the same time popping a bottle full off pills & have the gas running & a flame ready to go off, yet things don't quite go her way, it is bound to have anyone in splits.
The musical sequences, like the ones with the bed springs and the duet between Louison & Julie, she playing the cello & him playing a saw are quite the highlights of the film. The film, even though it could have been tempted to go that way in lieu of the subject matter, does not try to be moralistic or pose any philosophical questions. It is told as a simple story of love, & love & innocence triumphing over the ones who oppose them. The closing sequence, on the roof with the two kids & Louison & Julie playing their musical duet is almost surreal.
Overall, it is a wonderful, eccentric & imaginative grotesque comedy from the directors of 'Amelie' & 'The City of Lost Children'. A must watch for all lovers of the cinematic artform.