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In news that will have New Yorkers with a taste for Grand Guignol theatrics licking their chops in anticipation, the IFC Center on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue is hosting a 4K restoration of “Delicatessen” (1991). Those who have seen the film have already groaned at the previous sentence, knowing, as they do, that this bleak comedy concerns itself with cannibalism. Yet do they remember the love story at its core, a meeting of minds as sweetly insipid as it is slapstick? I didn’t.
Not that anyone new to “Delicatessen” should tromp into the film expecting a rom-com. The debut feature by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro is a hyperbolic descent into the grotesque. The filmmakers went on to make “The City of Lost Children” (1995), another phantasmagoric confabulation, before preparing to work on “Alien Resurrection” (1997), the fourth film in that franchise. Mr. Caro walked off the job after bristling at the idea of studio interference, while Mr. Jeunet stayed on, and followed it up with the much loved “Amélie” (2001).
Yet it was “Delicatessen” that set their careers into overdrive. If you didn’t know that Messrs. Jeunet and Caro established themselves as animators, they tip their hands before the title card has dropped. The camera zooms with alarming elasticity. Extreme close-ups and skewed angles predominate. So, too, do popping eyeballs. In terms of rhythm, Warner Brothers cartoons are the standard; in terms of mania, think Daffy Duck in particular. As for style, imagine Heironymous Bosch, Mad magazine circa 1952, and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” rolled up into an overripe bundle of last week’s table scraps.
Speaking of table scraps: The opening follows a young man attempting to flee from a bad situation. We are somewhere in France, albeit after the nation has suffered a catastrophic event to which we aren’t made privy. This world is awash in a golden haze that, in rare moments, aspires to Rembrandtian benevolence, but mostly devolves into the soiled, the sulfurous, and the soupy. Our protagonist, barely glimpsed but clearly desperate, disguises himself as garbage in order to slip out from the clutches of a mountainous individual wearing an apron and wielding a meat cleaver. The escape is thwarted. Our hero’s fate isn’t happy.
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Again, this set piece happens before the movie’s title ascends from the darkness. Set pieces are, in fact, the sum of the film’s parts: “Delicatessen” is less a sustained narrative than a run of impeccably orchestrated outrages. Among the most famous is when Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), our butcher trading in dubious wares, has sex with Mademoiselle Plusse (Karen Viard). Their amors occasion a rickety musical number that is genuinely funny in its complications. Hervé Schneid’s editing, exactingly rendered, is an integral part of these shenanigans.
Another clever bit, or, rather, series of bits, involves Aurore (Silvie Laguna), a tightly strung woman of Olive Oyl-like carriage and puritanical bearing. Using means that Rube Goldberg would’ve found elaborate, she continually attempts to kill herself and invariably fails to pull it off due to the inadvertent ministrations of her neighbors. Aurore’s frustration is so disheartening that we can’t help but root for her to succeed — which, of course, speaks to the strain of perversity that winds its way through “Delicatessen.”
Oh, yeah: the love story. It occurs between a retired clown (the rubbery-faced Dominique Pinon) and the butcher’s daughter, a myopic young woman of winsome mien (Marie-Laure Dougnac). Their courtship undergoes significant trials, especially given that the latter is intent on forestalling the imminent slaughter of the former.
There’s also an old man living amongst a bevy of frogs, a cadre of vegetarian activists trolling the city sewers, and the stray oddball who doesn’t feel that sacrificing a limb is too much to ask for a decent cut of meat. The movie loses considerable steam as it slogs toward an interminable finale, but there’s much to admire here in terms of production design, cinematography, and imaginative outreach. “Delicatessen” is a bizarrerie perfect for cinephiles with — no pun intended, please — peculiar tastes.
(c) 2023 Mario Naves
This article was originally published in the September 22, 2023 edition of The New York Sun.
Too Much Art 