#Delicatessen (1991)

[filmjunky-99]

d e l i c a t e s s e n, 1991 🎬 dir. jean-pierre jeunet, marc caro

[singlestayathomedad]

What happened to your friend... the same thing goes on here.

It takes place at night in the stairwell.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of an apartment building who occasionally prepares a delicacy for his odd tenants.

[j3z463l]

Delicatessen (1991)

[faffreux]

I love streaming weirdass films for my friends because I’ll get comments like “I have no idea what’s going on but I’m having a good time” during the movie

[kayra-derda-selim-hatta-hikmet]

[dilettantefish]

[bizarrobrain]

Delicatessen (1991) - Poster by Bartosz Kosowski

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Micmacs à tire-larigot (2009, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

26/04/2024

[horror-aesthete]

Delicatessen, 1991, dirs. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro

[filmjunky-99]

d e l i c a t e s s e n, 1991 🎬 dir. jean-pierre jeunet, marc caro

[romanceyourdemons]

the premise of alien resurrection (1997) is so forced it strains all suspension of disbelief and makes a mockery of ripley’s self-sacrifice at the end of the previous film—but the previous film is so dull and this film so interesting, and its treatment of the cartoonish premise is so attentive and responsible, that i have no grounds to criticize the “somehow palpatine returned” pretense of the narrative. this collaboration between two famously quirky filmmakers, screenwriter joss whedon and director jean-pierre jeunet, works beautifully, with jeunet’s lighthearted, almost cartoonishly heightened visuals reminiscent of delicatessen (1991) beautifully complimenting and adding liveliness to whedon’s wry dialogue and vivid character concepts. although the film smacks strongly of whedon’s now done-to-death style, prefiguring firefly and filled to the brim with quips and innuendoes, the self-effacing and fast-paced narrative is a breath of fresh air compared to the terse, self-serious previous films—and yet the film does not lose track of what is most significant to both the franchise and its own setup. with inventive, goopy visuals and heartrending scenarios, the film explores the shifting boundaries of humanity, the horror and power of being (or not being but being viewed as) a woman, violence and motherhood, and the blurred line between the erotic and horror, this time in a primarily lesbian way. the film makes sure to follow through with the implications of its excuse for bringing ripley back, that she and the alien queen were cloned from a frozen drop of her blood, by mixing up human and xenomorph traits in both cloned parties and gracefully retiring ripley from her role as exhausted final girl, making her a quasi-human thing instead. the final product is not a perfect film, with a cluttered first act and dialogue that is sometimes too clever for its own good and undercuts significant emotional beats; however, as a sequel to the alien franchise, it does an admirable job. i consider alien resurrection (1997) the third-best alien film yet created, after the first two, and i would highly recommend it

[docgold13]

The Best of the Best of Post-Apocalyptic Cinema*

Children of Men (2006) directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Stalker (1979) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

Delicatessen (1991) directed byJean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro

28 Days Later (2002) directed by Danny Boyle

Blindness (2008) directed by Fernando Meirelles

Snowpiercer (2013) directed by  Bong Joon-ho

A Boy and His Dog (1975) directed by Justus McQueen

The Wandering Earth (2019) directed by Frant Gwo

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) directed by George Miller

The Road (2009) directed by John Hillcoat

Soylent Green (1973) directed by Richard Fleischer

Wall•E (2008) directed by Andrew Stanton

The Omega Man (1971) directed by Boris Sagal

Sorry to Bother You (2018) directed by Boots Riley

The Book of Eli (2010) directed by Albert and Allen Hughes

Melancholia (2011) directed by Lars von Trier

The End of Evangelion (1997) directed by Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki

*according to me

[ophthalmotropy]

I was so caught up in my hatred of the meat industry that for a moment I lived in a world where murder was okay.

I'm reminded of the time I referred to cannibalism as "ethical meat consumption" before I remembered that murder is wrong...

[farewell-persephone]

some new-to-me movies I've enjoyed this year so far. reverse chronological watch order:

1. High Life (2018, dir. Claire Denis). Weird, disturbing prison ship science fiction. Sort of an anti-Interstellar; a cynical warning of where we're headed if we continue the depravity of prison slavery and exploitative science. Look up content warnings for this one if you need that sort of thing; it gets rough.

Interesting coincidence: I wrote a short story with a similar basic concept not long before this movie came out (I had never heard of it before last year). This movie is better than my story was.

2. Tampopo (1985, dir. Juzo Itami). Charming food comedy-western with alternately funny, touching, and absurd vignettes interspersed throughout the main plot. The egg scene...goodness, what a scene. This movie made me hungry; pair it with a bowl or two of ramen.

3. Harakiri (1962, dir. Masaki Kobayashi). A brutal and depressing story of a broken ronin seeking the end. If you know nothing about this movie, go into it blind. Absolutely loved the way this was shot.

4. Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa). Six samurai and Toshiro Mifune defend a poor village against bandits. Funny, exciting, sad, beautiful. One of the blueprints for modern action movies. Everything from a slew of westerns to Ocean's Eleven to A Bug's Life owes something to this movie.

5. Dr. Strangelove (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick). Satirical nuclear black comedy that shows that "redpill volcel conspiracy freak" is a type of guy that has seemingly always existed.

6. Come and See (1985, dir. Elem Klimov). "Enjoyed" is a strong word for this one, as good and important as it is. I wrote a short letterboxd review after watching it (something I've sort of given up on after a few):

"In a movie festering with disturbing images, one of the most affecting—and certainly one of the most relevant—was a Nazi woman eating lobster as her cohorts burned a village.

Exhausting."

7. Delicatessen (1991, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro). Post-apocalyptic horror-comedy. Extremely French. Enough piss-yellow filtering to make Vince Gilligan blush. Kind of dreamlike and hazy in the impression that it left on me. I need to watch it again I think.

8. Amores Perros (2000, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu). Another one I wrote a letterboxd review for. Some excerpts:

"A story in three converging lanes about the abuse, folly, fickleness, and redemption of loyalty. Ignore surface-level comparisons to Pulp Fiction; structure and violence are not all that makes a movie."

"The recurring variations on the dreary post-rock guitar theme are some of my favorite pieces of movie music I've heard recently."

"Maybe skip if you habitually check whether or not the dog dies."

9. Cinema Paradiso (1988, dir. Giuseppe Tornatore). A beautiful movie about movies. Another one that made it to letterboxd. My short review:

"I've seen this movie described as 'nostalgic,' but I feel that it's rather about transcending nostalgia and accepting that you can never go back. I cried; I wished I'd watched it years earlier; I had the urge to make something and love it."

10. Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro). An absolutely gorgeous Gothic horror-romance. Del Toro's beautiful visual style fires on all cylinders here. Similar to Pan's Labyrinth, while the ghosts are grotesque, it's the human antagonists that provide the real horror (though I will say that the Big Reveal is obvious and feels almost quaint these days).

[dynamoe]

Boy Genius wrapped up Feb 2023, but I got this nice review 10 days ago.

Maybe it was someone from Tumblr? If so and you're reading this, it has been the one light in a deeply hopeless two weeks— sincerely, thank you.

As I responded on AO3, I promise I will attempt to make all future backstory adventures more Eurocentric.

→ back to the Billy & White index

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Now, me, as a vulgar Ugly American— what do I know about European pop culture in the 1990s? What would have broken through to unambitious, uncultured suburban American teens?

Hmmmm... Barcelona '92 Olympics? The mascot was a scribbly dog thing. That's all I remember.

Ace of Base (Swedish) dominated 1994 with The Sign. They had another hit with All That She Wants (Is Another Baby) from the same year. Urban legends immediately started that they were Nazis and "the sign" was a swastika (an Ankh in the music video). Various levels of confirmation on that.

Do we count Björk as European?

I'm trying to think of European movies that broke through— the 1990s is the era of independent film but that was mostly focused on American auteurs. The big international hits were for an older audience— teens weren't into Lars von Trier or Three Colors Trilogy.

La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional (French-Italian) appealed big-time to the guys already into Tarantino and Hong Kong Action. At the end of the decade you get Run Lola Run (German), very big with teens and college students.

Billy and his date go see Jeunet-et-Caro's Delicatessen (French) in Tomorrow's Just Another Day. (Their City of Lost Children already referenced in VB for the design of Watch and Ward.)

Note, I'm excluding British pop culture, which I've already included a lot of in the fiction. The UK is still in the EU in the mid-90s, obvs, but American pop culture has a far different relationship with the British than with the rest of Europe. Even before the Beatles. "Cool Britannia" had a major hold in the US after 1997. A Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Tony Blair was on The Simpsons, before he became a war criminal. Trainspotting, Britpop and Elisabeth Hurley— God Save the Queen. As a British Comedy obsessive, I can write endlessly about the UK in the '90s—music, politics, TV, actors, comedians etc. Ask me anything about Spitting Image or all the stock jokes associated with Deputy PM John Prescott from Have I Got News for You. Except you shouldn't, it will be very boring for you.

Now the big European backstory story I have notes for would be a 1990-1991-set road trip through the Eastern Bloc and newly independent ex-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States as Billy and White try to pick up abandoned super-science research from former state-sponsored labs for pennies on the dollar.

Starting in East Berlin, they stumble through Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia into the Federation of Former Soviet States, heading east. White tries to trade Levis blue jeans for death ray plans. Billy mangles translating a dozen languages he barely understands (he's only 16).

They cause international incidents and nearly get killed over and over, running away to the next country. They are tailed by EuroPol, accidentally become oligarchs and have to be airlifted out of the US Embassy in Tashkent.

Tetris would be key. A Trojan Horse— it was actually a coded super-weapon meant to destabilize the west. Billy and White somehow figure it out and neuter its power while fucking everything else up.

I dunno. I might never write it but it's fun to think about.

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