Delicatessen
Director: Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Writer: Jean-Pierre Jeunet , Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien
Cast: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard, Ticky Holgado, Anne-Marie Pisani
Seen on: 30.3.2026
[Here’s my first review of the film.]

Plot:
Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is a butcher and a landlord in a world where food is increasingly scarce. So, he has resorted to butchering one of his tenants every once in a while. His newest tenant is Louison (Dominique Pinon) who trades work for a roof over his head. And when he is done with repairing the house, he is on the menu, not that he knows it. But Louison is more resourceful than Clapet suspects.

Despite my appreciation of Jeunet and of horror comedies, Delicatessen has spent decades on my watchlist before I finally saw it. And then I promptly forgot that I did see it (almost 15 years ago) and watched it again as if for the first time. I didn’t even realize that I had seen it while I watched it which is a rare thing. In any case, it is as good a watch now as it was back then, though obviously not as memorable as I thought.

Delicatessen is filled with absurd, funny, tender moments and weird people – it’s a good mix, wrapped in a very distinct style. Honestly, a film that is mostly brown isn’t exactly my aesthetic, but I can appreciate the vision and the determined way the film sticks to it.

But it would have worked only half as well without Pinon. His performance is so obviously of a clown that we wouldn’t even have needed to see his backstory to recognize that (but I loved that we did get it). Coupled with simply the way his face looks, it makes about 80% of the film.

Most of the rest of the film’s magic comes from Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) and Dougnac’s performance. Julie is obviously sheltered and somewhat naive, but also how could she be naive growing up in that house and that world. Dougnac wonderfully balances those two sides of her character.

Not all of the jokes in the film worked for me. Sometimes the film goes a little overboard with its whimsy. But most of the time it is so clearly following a vision that even the parts that didn’t work so well for me are pretty charming overall. As weird as it is to say about a film about a cannibalistic landlord: it is just a charming film.

Summarizing: fun.