Review of Delicatessen (1991) by Viet Phuong N — 01 Aug 2014

A strange film, even by Marc Caro/Jean-Pierrre Jeunet's standard, or simply put, a French "Terry Gilliam's Brazil" without the political/philosophical implication. If its successor "Amélie" can be considered a bizarrely beautiful film, this film can be considered a beautifully bizarre film with a very different tone and setting (steampunk post-apocalyptic background with a deadly flavor of hopelessness vs.

Amélie's pinky Parisian setting with the warm fragrance of up-beating love. It's a little bit pity that the directors, despite including many brilliant symbolic values to the film, seemingly focused more on depicting the strangeness of the setting and characters than putting more (existentialist, maybe) weight on the characters themselves.

Thus, the film can easily attract the audience with its charm and peculiarity but may never force them to think deeper afterwards. Still, this is a very fun film to watch (strangely enough, given the all-over depressed tone of the film) and it's even more interesting to observe Jean-Pierre Jeunet shifting from total peculiarity in "Delicatessen" through charming bizarreness in "Amélie" to surprising "ordinariness" in "A Very Long Engagement" (still, I absolutely love "A Very Long Engagement", even in comparison with "Amélie" - sometimes an "ordinary" film is somehow easier to feel, and to cherish, than a peculiar one).