Delicatessen
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, showing in Cannon cinemas Reviewed by Geoff Ryan Delicatessen is set in a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape of rubble and bombed out houses. food especially meat - is in short supply; money no longer exists and trade is carried out by barter.
Lentils are a major form of currency. A perpetual mist adds to the gloomy and menac ing atmosphere. The delicatessen of the title is the ground floor of an apartment block, inhabited by half-crazed boar ders. Into this delicatessen Louison (played by Dominihe way in which the butcher -block- and the other tenants how the butcher gets his meat.
ulte (Marie Laure Dous nac) the cello playin;
her falls in daughter of the bute! love with Louison and together they resist the murder attempts, as well as finding time to play a cello and musical saw duet on the roof! june seeks netp trom a bizatre. vegetarian 'underground Troglodytes - who, naturally, live in the sewers!
Meanwhile, another of the tenants, constantly tormented by voices encouraging her to kill herself, devises more anc committing suicide.
There are some wonderfully inventive moments, such as a brilliantly orchestrated and choreographed series of counterposed scenes. A couple making love on a bed with very squeaky springs, Julie playing cello, a woman beat15+ carpes, consor painting - which combine their disparate elements, both visually and audibly, into an exhilarating. climactic whole.
peticatessen portrays now hunger and deprivation can acts. It doesn't provide any quers all' but you can't have everything, suppose.
What you do get is extreme by runny ana mes native farce played at a frantic pace with many memorable scenes most of which are impossible to describe as they rely so much on the combination of visual and auditory images.