Delicatessen (97 minutes)
"Nobody is entirely evil: it's that circumstances that make them evil, or they don't know they are doing evil"
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This week we’re trying something new and going to France. This is my first foreign language film I’ve covered and I’m excited to push us all a little outside our comfort zones. (I know a lot of you come here just to talk about Jaws: The Revenge, let's be real.) I’m really pushing myself because instead of writing about one of the many French films I love and adore, I’m writing about one that is brand new to me. I’m nervous and excited, just like I was when I started this thing, and I think that’s a good sign.
Delicatessen (1991, 97 minutes) has been described as a post-apocalyptic science fiction black comedy romance (whew) set sometime in the recent past (many have speculated it’s an alternative end to WWII). Whatever is going on is pared down to the small ecosystem of a single apartment building where a domineering butcher, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), has devised a scheme to continue his trade and sell meat to the other residents. Clapet lures men to the building under the guise of an ad for a handyman, and swiftly kills and bundles them for purchase. The system works until one day a former clown (Dominique Pinon) arrives and is not only handy, but begins to charm the residents including Clapet’s daughter, Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac). Soon the finely tuned world of this apartment building begins to fall apart.
To write about Delicatessen is to write about director and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Though he shares the directorial credit with Marc Caro, Delicatessen sets the tone and tropes Jeunet would go on to use repeatedly in his career, most famously with the beautiful and quirky Amélie (2001) and the sweeping A Very Long Engagement (2004). Jeunet has an eye for the strange and grotesque, often choosing unflattering or distorted close-up shots of his actors rather than something more flattering or cinematically traditional. It is perhaps why he works so often with Dominique Pinon whose unique facial features are slightly cartoonish. He is expressive without being clownish (despite him actually playing a clown this time around).
Jeunet obsesses over the tiny details of seemingly small lives. In Delicatessen, we’re given few glimpses into the state of the rest of the world and instead are focused on a singular building on a singular street in a singular neighborhood. There are some TV programs, a couple newspapers, an expensive purchase of candy, but otherwise we are locked to our location, added by the grim, filthy air that surrounds everything, thick and impenetrable to see through. We watch the neighbors perform small tasks, play their instruments, work seemingly meaningless jobs (two men exclusively make Moo Boxes, which makes you really wonder about the state of the world), knit scarves, and have meals. And despite them all doing something very out of the ordinary -- all knowingly engaging in cannibalism -- their lives are very plain. Jeunet would explore this again in Amélie, in which our protagonist’s isolated lifestyle lends her a unique and omnipotent view of her neighbors.
Delicatessen is first and foremost a dark comedy and doesn’t shy away from any material. I found myself laughing the most as neighbor Aurore Interligator (Silvie Laguna) repeatedly tried to kill herself and repeatedly failed. Just trust me on this, it’s funny. Each attempt is more over-the-top than the last and Laguna nails the delivery. Other elements of the dark humor didn’t quite land perhaps as it should have for me, but I enjoyed enough to keep going and hope for a positive (as much as that is possible) ending.
I was also taken with the dynamic of the neighbors and how their lives overlapped either professionally, romantically, or secretly. It digs into the question of class and what determines class, as it clearly changes as the world does. In the Delicatessen world, money is obsolete, but corn is everything because plants have stopped growing. A group of outsiders known as the Troglodytes live underground, rejecting what little society is left above ground. The groups are pitted together but no one really knows why, other than their separateness. This is, though a simplistic view of society, poignant enough in the context of a movie where a woman must have sex with a murderous butcher to receive human meat to eat in return. (I said dark comedy and I meant it!)
If you’re at all interested in French films, it’s likely you’ve seen this one and have formulated years of opinions on it and Jeunet. I’d love to hear more in the comments. After all, I studied television and movies continue to be a space for me to learn and grow just as much as you all. I’m a fan, not an expert.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/movies/23micmacs.html
https://movieweb.com/jean-pierre-jeunet-movies/#am-eacute-lie