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The title credit for Delicatessen reads "Presented by Terry Gilliam," and it's easy to understand why the director of Brazil was so supportive of this outrageously black French comedy from 1991. Like Gilliam, French codirectors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro have wildly inventive imaginations that gravitate to the darker absurdities of human behavior, and their visual extravagance is matched by impressive technical skill. Here, making their feature debut, Jeunet and Caro present a postapocalyptic scenario set entirely in a dank and gloomy building where the landlord operates a delicatessen on the ground floor. But this is an altogether meatless world, so the butcher-landlord keeps his customers happy by chopping unsuspecting victims into cutlets, and he's sharpening his knife for a new tenant (French comic actor Dominque Pinon) who's got the hots for the butcher's nearsighted daughter! Delicatessen is a feast (if you will) of hilarious vignettes, slapstick gags, and sweetly eccentric characters, including a man in a swampy room full of frogs, a woman doggedly determined to commit suicide (she never gets its right), and a pair of brothers who make toy sound boxes that "moo" like cows. It doesn't amount to much as a story, but that hardly matters; this is the kind of comedy that springs from a unique wellspring of imagination and inspiration, and it's handled with such visual virtuosity that you can't help but be mesmerized. There's some priceless comedy happening here, some of which is so inventive that you may feel the urge to stand up and cheer. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (63)

A black comedy about having the neighbors for dinner...
What can you possibly say about a post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of a decaying apartment building who creates cannibalistic meals for his tenants who are some of the weirdest characters you will ever find on film? This is a world in which protein is hard to come by and the little old lady across the hall is starting to look good. "Delicatessen," a 1991 French film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is certainly imaginative but equally rude, a world in which good taste is certainly a relative concept. Of all the tenants trying to avoid being served up as dinner by their neighbors, the best is the woman who keeps trying to commit suicide but whose attempts, um, go slightly astray (I will say no more). This film is certainly on my evolving list of Top 10 Black Comedies, certainly much better than "Eating Raoul," the obvious American cinematic counterpart.

This is especially for francophiles!
This movie is my all-time favorite and for many reasons. If you see it for no other reason, the coordination between the bouncing on the bed, cello playing, painting, mooing toys, etc is well worth it. This scene is a perfect example of why this movie is so amazing. I saw it for the first time on the Independent Film Channel and jumped at every chance afterwards to see it again. The characters are brilliant and you lose yourself in their quirks. Even those who don't speak French will appreciate the movie as a lot of the beauty of the film isn't in the dialogues, but in the style, backgrounds, and subtleties throughout. If there was one movie that everyone should see, this is it. It gives a nice picture of the dark side of humanity without being too frightening and preachy. Plus I am a big fan of Dominique Pinon.

A pity this isn't available
I find it hard to believe this isn't available on DVD when there is so much junk out there that is still available. This film isn't that old. I really hope they bring it out on DVD. I first saw it when I was learning French and years later when I could speak French. Both times it was great.

Dark movie shining bright.
If there is a Hollywood director closest to Jeunet, then it would have to be Tim Burton. Domnique Pinon's character brings to mind a French version of Edward Scissorhands or Ichobald Crane from 'Sleepy Hollow'. The out of place new guy who's blatantly unaware of the machinations that lie behind the faces he sees. In 'Delicatessen' Jeunet spends a lot of time focusing on faces and you get the feeling that it must have been a lot of fun casting this film. Each actor seems to have been chosen as much for their extraordinary face as for their acting abilities. Not a frame is wasted as every facial tick bears with it the same intensity of expression as every action sequence.

Like Burton, Jeunet also came to film direction through animated shorts and it's this animated sensibility that has given him the discipline and vision to create truly amazing live action films. Which is one of the main reasons why this subtitled film seems to be such a success with American audiences. It thrives on that most American of cinematic sensibilities, a heightened sense of unreality. Most European movies prefer to dwell on the emotions that lurk beneath the mundane aspects of everyday life. Not so stateside where such an elevation of the ordinary is met with the Homeric cry of "Bo-ring!" It's not surprising then that European directors such as Jeunet and Pedro Almodovar will continue to have success across the water as long as their fantastical and colourful stories glitter bright in the land that likes to dazzle.

STUNNED...
That was my impression after watching through this very strange movie.

I had started watching it expecting a "weird French film", and that was indeed what I got at first. I couldn't believe the atmosphere that the directors had created in this film, though I imagine it might have been somewhat familiar to some Francophones living in the destruction after WW2. The introductory sequence to this film is MASTERFULLY shot, and it raised my expectations quite a bit.
Unfortunately, the same level of energy didn't seem to last when the movie really started. The atmosphere was fantastic, yes, and the inventions that were made in this movie (a MUSICAL SAW?) were totally unique. However, no amount of weird atmosphere can amend a movie if the story and characters aren't up to the job. In fact, it's a lot harder to create good characters & plot for a movie like this, because the movie has to make sense within its own unique world and yet make us the viewers feel like something REAL is at stake.
For a while, it seemed like Delicatessen was only as deep as its cover; scenes whose only purpose seemed to be to show the inventions of the movie dragged on too long, and the various conversations that the tenants of the apartment building had (I'm assuming you know the general story here) seemed to have no meaning. The Troglodytes that came in about 1/2-way through also didn't quite seem to fit in.
However, by the end of the movie all was justified. I realized just what an enormous task the movie had done; this is not a story of just the two main characters, but a story of at about a dozen tenants of the apartment building. By the end of the movie, each tenant of the apartment building was portrayed as a unique individual, and each had their own story. These mini-stories are masterfully weaved through the main plot of the movie, and much to the movie's benefit, because I came to care for these secondary characters as much as for the main ones.

The movie was also DEEPLY disturbing for me to watch. It doesn't wince at talking about the subject of cannibalism, and the true worth of a human being. It was very disconcerning when I realized, near the end, that this movie had something to say about OUR world as well, and it was not a very approving message.

As strange as it may sound, this could really happen.
Watch the film, and think about it. ... Read more