DELICATESSEN
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson
104 min., not rated, Drama/Comedy, 1991, French w/ English subtitles Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro Cast: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfuss, Karin Viard, Rufus, Ticky Holgado, Silvie Laguna, Jaques Mathou, Jean-Francois Perrier, Anne-Marie Pisani, Howard Vernon, Chick Ortega
In the post-apocalypse future, when fresh meat is almost impossible to come by, Jean-Claude Dreyfuss runs a delicatessen/apartment house. Dreyfuss gets meat for his delicatessen by getting handy men to come to the apartment building, and after they have done some work, Dreyfuss slaughters them. After clown Doninique Pinon's partner is killed by roving savages for meat, he goes to work for Dreyfuss as a handyman, not knowing what his fate is going to be. Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dreyfuss's daughter, falls in love with Pinon and tries to save him from Dreyfuss.
I found DELICATESSEN to be an extremely enjoyable film, and highly recommend it to anyone who has a taste for the bizarre. I have been waiting since I saw the first review on DELICATESSEN for it to come to my local art/import theater so I could see it because it sounded really good. I am pleased to say that after seeing the film I am really happy that I went to see it. It was better than I expected it to be. On a scale of zero to five I give DELICATESSEN a five. DELICATESSEN is not rated but contains violence, explicit language, and adult situations.
The actor who I felt did the best job is Chick Ortega, who played the mailman. His character seemed to really have depth. I also thought that his character was one of the neatest, although all the characters in the film were fascinating, and bizarre, in their own way. The acting in the film was great. The story line was well written. All of the characters in the film were interesting, but weird. I felt myself wanting to know more about each one. They were each unique, yet they were all alike. I really got drawn into this film and I would have gone to see it again, but before I got a chance to go back the film had finished its run as it only played for seven days. If this film comes to a theater near you, I highly suggest that you go see it. I loved it and I am not the biggest fan of foreign films.
The scenery was bleak, yet interesting. The world that was created is MAD-MAX-like, which could be expected because they are both post- apocalypse. I found myself wondering though, what was beyond the delicatessen, or if it was all wasteland. The one part of the film that I found rather hard to accept was how bad the technology was. None of the items used by anybody was new. It was, I would estimate, pre-50's. Is the film implying that all of the new technology will be wiped out with the nuclear war?
One last note, this film is subtitled and the language spoken is the original language. I prefer subtitled film to dubbed films because it annoys me when the mouths are saying something different than what I hear. Those people who hate subtitling will probably get annoyed with this film and might prefer to wait for a dubbed video cassette version as one will probably show up.
Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu
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