Delicatessen (1991)
In a dystopian world, love sparks conflict in a butcher's family. Fans of dark, quirky tales will be intrigued.
Genres: Comedy, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Cast
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- Cast member 5
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- Cast member 10

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Delicatessen(1991)
Overview
In a post-apocalyptic world, the residents of an apartment above the butcher shop receive an occasional delicacy of meat, something that is in low supply. A young man new in town falls in love with the butcher's daughter, which causes conflicts in her family, who need the young man for other business-related purposes.
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Cast
Full Cast & Crew
Dominique Pinon
Louison

Marie-Laure Dougnac
Julie Clapet

Jean-Claude Dreyfus
Clapet

Karin Viard
Mademoiselle Plusse

Ticky Holgado
Marcel Tapioca

Pascal Benezech
Tried to Escape

Edith Ker
Grandmother

Rufus
Robert Kube

Jacques Mathou
Roger Kube

Chick Ortega
Postman

Jean-François Perrier
Georges Interligator

Silvie Laguna
Aurore Interligator

Howard Vernon
Frog Man

Dominique Zardi
Taxi Driver

Anne-Marie Pisani
Madame Tapioca

Maurice Lamy
Pank

Patrick Paroux
Puk

Marc Caro
Fox

Eric Averlant
Turner

Dominique Betenfeld
Paumeau
Featured Comments/Tips
Really weird French remake of _The Suite Life of Zack 'amp; Cody_.
Weird, well-written character-driven dark comedy.
In one building they have a special food supply system.
What a hidden gem, just an absolute pleasure to watch.
What a truly bizzare film. Zack and Cody before their time.
One of those films that has a great setting and a beautiful visual style but just doesn't add up as a full feature. I didn't love it as Lost Children, from the same filmmaker, but I see the potential to revisit it and maybe change my mind.
Nostalgic, disjointed, and delightfully childish, striking a perfect balance between unsettling nightmare and fairytale. While it starts to drag a little in the middle, the sheer number of memorable vignettes keeps it engaging, and it fully redeems itself in the final moments.
The bed spring is an amazing character :joy:
Looks good. Really good. The story idea itself is brilliant. Sadly it'#39;s never fully utilised and remains that initial idea. It'#39;s such a tiny world and with that you really need intensity from the characters or to find some real depth in them. I didn'#39;t think these characters did that after a while. The comedy comes in the form of jolly /silly scenes which felt too different (perhaps dated) to the rest of the movie for me. I wish it had just stuck to being dark in tone instead of a mixture of things. By the time youve invested into one atmosphere up pops another, so i never really felt as immersed as id liked. The plot structure was sometimes witty and sometimes incredibly simple. Sometimes the simplicity had a good impact and at other times it was just boring. The story became nothing new. It wasn'#39;t stimulating enough in its events. Not a bad movie but it didn'#39;t win me over.
Decided to rent this one on VUDU after a friend told me of it being '#34;artsy'#34;, and definitely is pretty artsy. I like the visual style: the tilted camera angles, the choice of colors, transitions and close-up shots which reminded me of the cinematography in films like _Jacob'#39;s Ladder_ (1990), _Dead Alive_ (1990), _12 Monkeys_ (1995), and _Babe_ (1995). The characters are strange and interesting. It all takes place in a post-apocalyptic France in this one small apartment building where the landowner sells human delicacy. Mademoiselle Plusse, played by Karin Viard, is such a hottie in this. It has a few comical moments here and there with the rhythmic music, and ends with a triumphant love story. I might pick this up on Blu-ray someday.
Level '#34;Excellent'#34; • 8 :heart: • Recommended.
I love french films and this is one of my favorites.
This movie has a weird relationship with both colo(u)r and rhythm. Scene's are either 'set' to a specific colorscheme, or somehow based around rhythm, sometimes subtly hid in movement. This movie has a 'weird', period. Very arthouse-y, beautifully made. I feel it, on occasion, prefers symbolism over storytelling to the detriment of the story itself. That being said: The story that IS there is mainly used to give rise to absurdist situations, some dark humor, a complete portmanteau of oddity wrapped in a small tale of a postapocalyptic butchershop. This may be a love-it-or-loathe-it for most, but I enjoyed it. Not overly 'French', artsy without being pretentious, just long enough to retain your attention. Recommended!
Featured User Reviews
**French-style grotesque surrealism, in a film with style but no content.** I think I got to know Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the same way as almost everyone who doesn't follow French cinema at the same time: through the film “Amelie”. The film brought the director international and is unanimously considered his greatest and most relevant work. Given how much I liked this movie, I decided to see this one, but my experience was different. If “Amelie” was magical and beautiful, this film is much more uninteresting. It was treated like a surreal nightmare: it's a story about a butcher who occasionally sells human flesh in a dystopian future. Regardless of how much I felt disgusted by the aesthetics adopted in the film and by its bizarre theme, there is no doubt that it was a work with notes of quality: the degradation of buildings and the environment symbolizes or synthesizes the degradation of morals and values. The cacophony of sounds and images, between the dreamlike and the grotesque, is purposeful and intense (for example, that moment when the sound of bed springs where a couple makes love mixes with the sounds of a girl practicing the cello or from another neighbor who paints the ceiling of his apartment). The director's marks of talent, the quality we saw in “Amelie” is here, but distorted and adapted to a much less sympathetic film project. The film has good actors and the performance of each of them helps the film to become a little more palatable. Dominique Pinon stood out the most: he knows how to balance between seriousness and hilarity, and has a body and facial expressiveness that is remarkable. Jean Claude Dreyfus also deserves a positive note, while Marie-Laure Dougnac doesn't seem to me to have anything relevant to do other than appear ethereal, diaphanous as a mirage. Being a film that cares more about style than content, it also presents us with a very sharp and stylized cinematography: I must say that I admired the camera angles and the filming work, quite original, but that I don't particularly like the color, where an ocher tone made the film excessively brown. And despite the efforts, the soundtrack is one of those innocuous elements, which neither enhances nor harms the film because it does not deserve our attention in a relevant way.

I did really quite enjoy this film, but I'll be honest - half the time I had no idea what was going on! From the start I expected Steven Sondheim's "Mrs. Lovett" to be working on her pies downstairs, beneath the shop of "Clapet" (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). They all live in a France where food is very scarce and people have an habit of disappearing without trace! He also owns a rather dilapidated block of flats next door and he needs a janitor. Enter the poor, unsuspecting, "Louison" (Dominique Pinon) who needs a place to stay. He used to be a clown, but now the joke is very much on him as he meets the intimidating "Mlle. Plusse" (Karin Viard) and the escapades begin in earnest. To the chagrin of her father, he quickly falls in love with the daughter of the house "Julie" (Marie-Laure Dougnac) and in order to save their burgeoning romance, she has to seek the assistance of a subterranean section of society called the "Troglodytes" but more resembling a society of oilskin-clad moles. These folks live a scavengers life, ferreting around for grain and corn where they can find it. As "Louison" closes in on the secret of his employer, and his relationship with "Julie" becomes more serious, they must take to the bathroom and hope rescue comes before the hatchet falls a bit too close to home! I don't usually do surreal so well, but this is really quite an enjoyable farce of a film to watch. The characters - well, most of them, have just enough of an anchor in reality to keep it in this dimension; Dreyfus and his sidekick bring quite an entertaining hint of menace and there's a great scenes with Pinon and a knife through his head on a plate! Oddly enough, it does make more sense as it proceeds - it's just not always that obvious! Quirky and entertaining. Give it a go.
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