Delicatessen (UHD)

Director: Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien
Starring: Marie-Laure Dougnac, Dominique Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard
Country: France
Running Time: 99 min
Year: 1991
BBFC Certificate: 15

In a post apocalyptic future, in an unidentified French town, something sinister is brewing at a local butchers. Just what is the special meat that the butcher, Clapet (Dreyfus), is selling to the tenants of the apartment block he runs, where does his hired help keep vanishing off to and what is the strange history of his latest assistant, Louison (Pinon)?

Released in 1991, Delicatessen is the debut feature film from French directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. An instant cult hit both in its native country and overseas, the film is getting a much deserved 4K glow up from Studio Canal which  only serves to demonstrate how much of a timeless classic this oddball black comedy is. With a dystopian apocalypse setting and sense of humour that recalls the charm of early Terry Gilliam, particularly 1985’s divisive Sci-Fi comedy Brazil, and kinetic camerawork that would feel at home in the early films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, Delicatessen was very much a calling card for its two young directors, establishing the style that Jeunet in particular would take into his later films.

Delicatessen is most certainly a comedy, at times wonderfully farcical, threading together numerous stories about the residents of Clapet’s apartment building across its brisk 99 minute runtime. Almost feeling like a collection of vignettes, we get one of the tenants attempting to block out the voices in her head with an increasingly elaborate series of suicide attempts, Clapet’s daughter, Julie (Dougnac), attempting to woo Louison in a series of slapstick encounters and the classically bawdy sequence in which the loud squeaking of bedsprings acts as a metronome for the increasingly frantic activities of the characters.

It’s perhaps these individual moments which stand out the most in Delicatessen’s comic tapestry, more so than the overarching story of Clapet’s nefarious goings on with the source of his meat and the remarkably inept underground vegetarian movement who are seeking to take him down. But despite its surrealist (but never nonsensically so) nature, Delicatessen is an absolute delight. It also manages to find time in its levity for some genuinely touching moments, particularly with Louison and Juile, the former of which has a real undercurrent of tragedy to his story as it’s gradually revealed, and there is always a thread of this darkness running through even the most comedic moments.

It doesn’t hurt that, even over 30 years later, Delicatessen still looks absolutely gorgeous. The set design is impeccable, with each of the characters having a very defined look and feel and accompanying colour palette to the decor of their apartment, and the shot compositions are superb with the directors filling the frame with things to look at. The sparing use of visual effects also helps, with many model shots and in camera effects being used alongside stop motion to create a very vivid albeit exaggerated world for the story’s characters to inhabit. This is all brought to the glorious fore in this superb UHD transfer with the HDR just making the sets jump out of the screen and really nailing home what a beautiful film this is.

If you’ve never seen Delicatessen before but are perhaps familiar with Jeunet’s later works such as Alien Resurrection, Amelie or the equally madcap Micmacs, it’s well worth checking out this early, brilliant film from a pair of filmmakers who hit the top of their game straight out of the gate, especially on this superb UHD release.

Bonus Features

• Audio commentary with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
• Making of: Fine Cooked Pork Meats
• Main Course Pieces
• Jean-Pierre Jeunet Archive
• Interview with Jeunet and Caro

While not the most comprehensive of discs, this UHD release from Studio Canal brings with it a decent amount of material both archival and relatively new to dip into the making of Delicatessen, as well as a look at the wider works of its filmmakers.