Another French Surrealistic Masterpiece

From the directing team behind the excellent film CITY OF LOST CHILDREN comes DELICATESSEN, another outstanding piece of French cinema that puts most American features to shame. If you're looking for a bizarre film that will surely appease your artistic nature, then this may be the ticket.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic France, where we find a lone building, or so it seems, that houses a variety of tenants all renting from a butcher who operates a shop at the bottom. In this world food has become a sort of commodity, and wealth is determined by the amount of grain or corn that a person has. This butcher, however, has determined an alternate source of sustinance in the form of humans. Yes, this guy murders his tenants when they can't pay the rent, and then sells the meat at his shop. I said this one was bizarre.

The film mainly focuses on a newcomer in the building, a former circus performer who goes there inquiring about a job at the building. He gets the job and settles in, unaware of the goings-on in the building. Soon he meets the butcher's daughter, Julie, who he falls in love with. But all is not well, as the butcher seemingly goes more and more off the wall.

Where this film suceeds is its surrealism and totally bizarre and offbeat imagery and scenarios. There's a woman tenant who is constantly harrassed by unknown voices, and driven to commit suicide in a bunch of ludicrous ways, including a sewing machine that pulls fabric out from under a lamp while she waits in a bathtub for the lamp to fall in and electrocute her, and a set up with a noose, pills, a shotgun, and an oven. There's also a man who lives in a room that is always leaking from the ceiling who has a room full of toads and snails, and has a big pile of empty snail shells from all the snails he has eaten. One of the best scenes in the film occurs when the butcher and his mistress are having sex in one of the upper rooms. The bed squeaks so loudly that every one in the building's activities are set to the rhythm of the squeaking bed; a bizarre and humorous sequence.

Eventually, a group of outlaws who live in the sewers get involved in the whole scheme of things, and try to kidnap the circus performer, but of course, botch the whole thing quite horribly. The climax of the film is both action-packed and very odd, and the whole thing is quite a cinematic experience.

As with CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, the film is an absolute masterpiece of surrealism. The world that these characters find themselves in is bizarre, and dark. We see very little of the outside world, but from what it seems, there appears to be little else except the delicatessen around for miles. The interior sets are just meticulously detailed, and very VERY strange and fascinating. There is a nice opening montage as well. Although you can't read the credits that are playing during this scene, the cinematography and design of the sequence are just incredible. The film is shot with absolute perfection, and there is an incredible sense of natural beauty and artistic flair in everything that is shown on camera. This truly is an artistic and thematic masterpiece, and serves as a template for what a great film can be in the hands of a capable cast and production crew.

Overall, this is a top-notch piece of filmmaking. This and CITY OF LOST CHILDREN deserve to be seen by any connouisseur of great film. They are both examples of brilliant concepts being translated as groundbreaking and extraordinary filmed art. I can't urge anyone enough to see these two films. They are absolutely two of the best films I have ever had the experience and pleasure of viewing.