From rec.arts.sf-reviews Tue Oct 15 09:28:08 1991 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:447 rec.arts.sf-reviews:87 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!seunet!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas E. Billings) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf-reviews Subject: REVIEW: DELICATESSEN Summary: r.a.m.r. #01140 Keywords: author=Billings Message-ID: <1991Oct14.133240.15108@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 14 Oct 91 13:32:40 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: teb@stat.Berkeley.EDU Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley Lines: 68 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies.reviews. -Moderator] DELICATESSEN A film review by Thomas E. Billings Copyright 1991 Thomas E. Billings Synopsis: At a time when food is scarce and cannibalism rampant, a butcher obtains meat to sell by hiring handymen and then, when the time is right, chopping them up. His daughter falls in love with the latest handyman, an unemployed circus clown and vegetarian, and tries to save him. Sick, demented, warped, and, of course, outrageously funny! More a black comedy than a horror film; will appeal to fans of EATING RAOUL. France (English subtitles), color, 1991, 97 minutes. Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro. Let me begin by saying that although the subject of the film is cannibalism, there is very little blood or gore in the film. Some, but certainly not all, of the violence in the film is implied. The (human) "meat" that the butcher sells is packaged in opaque, paper packages; it is all very sanitized. However, if the film's visuals don't gross you out, the film's very sick humor may! The film takes place at some undetermined time in the future, when food is scarce. Although it is not explicitly stated, it appears there was a war that stopped food production. Grain is so scarce it is used as money, and cannibalism is rampant. A butcher owns a small apartment block; he routinely runs an ad in a newspaper for a maintenance worker. The butcher's practice is to hire a new maintenance worker, then kill him and sell the meat to the residents of the apartment building, who are all cannibals. The butcher hires a new maintenance worker, an unemployed circus clown (and vegetarian) named Stanley. Soon Stanley meets the butcher's daughter, and love blossoms. The butcher's daughter tries to convince her father to spare Stanley from the chopping block, but her father refuses. Distraught and desperate to save her beloved, the butcher's daughter seeks help from the Troglodytes, an underground (literally) vegetarian group that tries to rescue people from cannibals.... Although this is one of the sickest films I have seen in some time, it is also very, very funny. The emphasis of the film is on black humor rather than gore or blood. Perhaps the best comparison film is EATING RAOUL, another warped comedy about cannibalism. Although many viewers will appreciate and enjoy the film's warped humor, others may find it to be in very poor taste! The film is well-made and conforms to high production standards. The art design is excellent and contributes substantially to the strange atmosphere of the film. The writing is truly excellent, with plenty of dry, sarcastic, very sick humor to delight (or offend) the viewer. One of the film's weak points is the Troglodytes, a weird gang that live in the city's sewer system. The film never makes it clear exactly what they are; it is suggested that they are vegetarians rescuing people from cannibals. However, they are portrayed as a bizarre and totally incompetent cult (one could claim that the cannibals are shown in a better light in the film). Certainly their weirdness is funny at times, though I felt they added little to the film. I would recommend the film to fans of EATING RAOUL, and to those that enjoy black humor that is truly warped. Sensitive, easily offended people should avoid the film as you probably won't enjoy its humor. Distribution/Print Source: Currently on the festival circuit, i.e., showing only at film festivals. The U.S. distributor is Miramax Films, so it will be released in the U.S. in the future (no info. on timing). From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 22 15:09:08 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:686 rec.arts.sf.reviews:91 Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) Subject: REVIEW: DELICATESSEN Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1992 14:24:48 GMT Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com Message-ID: <1992Jun19.142448.20821@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Summary: r.a.m.r. #01409 Keywords: author=Leeper Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Lines: 49 [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] DELICATESSEN A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Weird and morbid comedy about life in some strange post-Holocaust future. Cannibals and vegetarians battle in a world where the only meat available is from other people. Meanwhile, life goes on in a strange apartment house over a delicatessen. Offbeat is putting it mildly. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4). The time is the future, perhaps ten years after it all went bad. The sky is thick yellow fog. Humans have two legs and frogs have four, but the only other animals left alive have six or eight. Legal tender is bags of lentils or corn. And something else has disappeared with the world we knew. What is missing is something like sanity. With so few animals around, society has been broken into two classes, vegetarians and those who have taken to heart the adage that one man's meat is another man's person, so to speak. The setting is an apartment house standing over one of the few remaining delicatessens. And only rarely does the delicatessen have meat. In the apartment there are the long-term residents and the transients. The transients do not so much move out as disappear. And as their luck would have it, they always disappear just in time to miss one of the meat days at the delicatessen. In the apartment building live a typical bunch of people. There is the supremely myopic cello player who has nearly given up on finding a husband. There are two men who make those toy cylinders that when turned upside down moo like a cow used to. Then there is the nice woman who hears voices telling her to commit suicide. She tries to oblige in complex and creative ways. Fortunately or not, her Rube-Goldberg-like suicide mechanisms just don't work. Into this old neighborhood moves an ex-circus clown ear-marked to be literally dead meat. Somehow he evades the butcher's knife and falls for the nearly blind cello player. With many a supremely gruesome twist and turn, this film is a logical descendent of the British film THE BED-SITTING ROOM and the French LE DERNIER COMBAT--two very strange slice-of-post-holocaust-life black comedies. And it perhaps is the most entertaining of the three. Some of its visual style is also reminiscent of BRAZIL. the style is mostly short gag scenes that eventually add up to a plot which in the final third is somewhere between madcap and frenetic. This is a film for particularly morbid tastes in comedy. I give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. Mark R. Leeper att!mtgzy!leeper leeper@mtgzy.att.com