Delicatessen

Starring: Dominique Pinon Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

DVD Features:

Audio:

• Dolby Digital 5.1 - French
• Subtitles - English, Spanish

Additional Release Material:

• Audio Commentary  - Jean-Pierre Jeunet - Co-Director
• Featurettes -  1. Fine Cooked Meats: The Making of DELICATESSEN
                      2. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Archives
• Trailers - 1. Original Trailer
               2. Teaser

Product Description:

After years of working successfully in commercials and music videos, French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet make a splashing feature-film debut, DELICATESSEN, a hysterical exercise in style. Scripted by comic book writer and frequent Caro and Jeunet collaborator Gilles Adrien, the story follows a sweet-natured clown, Louison (Dominique Pinon), who moves into a run down apartment building with a delicatessen on the ground floor and falls in love with the butcher's daughter, Julie Clapet (Marie-Laure Dougnac). When it turns out that Julie's father (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is actually butchering human beings and selling the meat to the carnivorous tenants of the building, Julie must decide if she will remain loyal to her father's business or expose the truth in order to save Louison from being the next victim. Taking place entirely inside, underneath, and on the roof of the delicatessen, the film uses an old pipe that runs throughout the building as a channel of communication for its characters.

Caro and Jeunet have a flair for visual communication and comedy that overflows in DELICATESSEN, keeping viewers engaged in the film even when the style seems to swallow the plot. In one of the most mimicked scenes of the 1990s (most notably in commercials), the directors brilliantly choreograph a bizarre event in which the separate activities of each of the hotel's tenants--a couple making love in a squeaky bed, a man painting his ceiling, a woman playing the cello--become hilariously rhythmic and synchronized. This scene spawned an entirely new cinematic language, making DELICATESSEN one of the most auspicious directorial debuts of the '90s.

Plot Synopsis:

For Parisians living in the 21st Century, a severe food shortage means either you eat dinner, or you are dinner. Profit-hungry butchers have taken to slicing up tenants and selling them as choice loin. Fortunately, a few quirky locals have devised furtive ways to survive in a world plagued by suspicion, famine, and cannibalism.

Plot Keywords:

Black Comedy | Campy | Cannibalism | Comedy | Fantasy | Post-Apocalypse | Recommended | Theatrical Release

Production Notes:

• Released theatrically: April, 1992.
• Shot on location in France.

Cast and Crew: