From: georgr@microsoft.com (George V. Reilly)
Subject: REVIEW: DELICATESSAN
Reply-To: georgr@microsoft.com (George V. Reilly)
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Date: Fri, 15 May 1992 16:35:29 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01366
Keywords: author=Reilly

				 DELICATESSAN
		       A film review by George V. Reilly
			Copyright 1992 George V. Reilly

     DELICATESSEN is a film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro
and written by Jeunet, Caro, and Gilles Adrien.  It stars Dominic Pinon,
Marie-Laure Dougnac, and Jean-Claude Dreyfus.  French with subtitles.

     DELICATESSEN calls to mind all sorts of adjectives: surreal,
bizarre, grotesque, hilarious.  It has been likened to Terry Gilliam's
BRAZIL.  To me it's more like Gormenghast---a huge, rambling house, set
in mysterious isolation, peopled with the oddest characters.

     In the post-apocalyptic world of DELICATESSEN, food is at a
premium: fresh meat is impossible to get.  Clapet (Dreyfus) the butcher
has hit upon the answer.  He lures unsuspecting young men to the house
which he runs, fattens them up a little, then kills them, and sells the
meat to his tenants.

     Such an innocent is Louison (Pinon), a clown who lost his job when
his partner, Mr.  Livingstone the chimp, was killed and eaten when he
strayed.  Louison is taken on as a repair man in exchange for free food
and board.  Soon he meets and enchants Julie (Dougnac), Clapet's timid
short-sighted daughter.

     Julie falls in love with Louison and decides to save him.  She gets
in touch with the Troglodytes, who are literally the Underground
Resistance.  They are unwilling to help her, fearing a trap, but she
convinces them with the intelligence that her father's cellar is filled
with food.

     The Troglodytes, who are howlingly inept, mount their combined
attack and rescue on the next night, the same night that the butcher has
decided to kill the unwitting Louison.  The events of this night take up
the latter half of the film.

     The characters are delightful.  Louison, the circus clown, with his
funny-ugly face is gravely hilarious.  Julie, is shy and innocent but
determined to save her love.  Clapet is both malevolent and insinuating.
Much of the first half of the film is devoted to a series of vignettes
about the minor characters.  Aurore Inteligator who hears voices and
attempts suicide with a succession of ever more elaborate Rube
Goldberg--like devices.  The two men making a collection of toys that
moo when they are turned over.  The old man in the half-flooded basement
surrounded by snails and frogs which he eats.  The two boys who steal
and sabotage their neighbours' property in ingenious manner.  The
Troglodytes, like taller Time Bandits.  The Postman, Clapet's crony and
Julie's would-be lover, who acts like Dirty Harry and who always get the
mail through.

     Perhaps the funniest scene is when the butcher is making love to
his mistress.  We never see them directly, just the underside of the
bouncing bed and the squeaking springs.  The sound of the springs is
conducted all over the house by the pipes and the airvents to Julie
playing her cello, to a woman beating a carpet, to Louison painting the
ceiling with a roller while attached to the wall with his braces
bouncing back and forth, and to a metronome.  As the butcher increases
his speed, the springs squeak faster and faster, louder and louder,
pulsing through the house, and we cut more and more quickly from the
springs to the cello to the carpet beating to the rebounding painter to
the metronome and back to the springs, until finally we have reached a
throbbing intensity which is released---at last---when the butcher
climaxes.  The audience laughed themselves silly as this happened.

     Visually, DELICATESSEN is interesting too.  The house is dark and
gloomy, suggestive of what goes on there.  Only Julie's room is bright,
an oasis amidst the evil.  The characters are dressed in 1940s styles
and would not have looked out of place in France under the Nazis.

     I greatly enjoyed DELICATESSEN and I recommend it.
________________
George V. Reilly
GeorgR@microsoft.com  (formerly gvr@cs.brown.edu)

--
-scott
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