Delicatessen (Jean-Pierre Jeunet 1991) Over the last decades few world cinema films have had the impact Amelie had on audiences worldwide, Chan Wok-Park’s Oldboy and Fernado Meirelles’ City of God being the only serious competition against Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s masterpiece. Viewers fell in love with the character with as much intensity as they fell in love of Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography and J...eunet’s plot and narrative. The auteur and his or her body of work is generally affected by such a massive success, a classical example is Chan Wok-Park’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance that in general terms is a much superior film then Oldboy losing only in terms of style but being much greater in the construction of plot, narrative and characters. Unlike Oldboy, the action is contextualized within the narrative and does not have surreal and unrealistic plot developments that add nothing to the story despite being visually stunning. On a similar but not the same level, we have Jeunet’s Amelie and his previous work Delicatessen. Delicatessen tells the story of a post apocalyptic planet earth in which most life was wiped out and therefore meat is the most valued commodity. In order to ensure a good standard of living the landlord of an apartment building decides from time to time to kill one of his tenants and then sell their meat in his delicatessen. His newest tenant, Luison, does not know about his activities and to add to his tragedy he falls in love with the landlords daughter putting himself on top of the list on the process. Luison and his beloved Julie now must find to escape from this terrible fate in order to be together. Delicatessen is a visual treat with some of the funniest and more entertaining moments any viewer will have the opportunity to witness. The color pallet used by Darius Khondji is impressive with oranges and dark browns adding to the fog of the post apocalyptic landscape, the lighting adds shadows to the moving images and a brilliant musical composition that always seems appropriated to each of the sequences. But even more important is that Delicatessen is about the little scenes separated that when combined give a completely new experience to the viewers experience: Mrs. Interligator on her doomed suicide attempts, the shy and clumsy Julie who cannot serve the tea because she does not have her glasses, Mr. Clapet on his hunt to new preys and definitely my two favorite funny scenes ever, Luison and Mademoiselle Plusse trying to fix the bed and the sex scene between Mr. Clapet and Mademoiselle Plusse. Delicatessen was a great find for me a few years ago, hope it can be your find of 2011.
