Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro are two of the only Frenchmen in the world that I can honestly say I respect and admire. These two have written and directed some of the most inspired flicks I've stumbled over and cracked my teeth on the pavement for in the last 5 years at least. Though my venture into their unique and surreal world started with The City Of Lost Children and continued with Alien Ressurection, I took a sharp turn in the chronologically opposite direction and sought out their earlier work with 1991's Delicatessen: a love story in a post-apocalyptic wasteland... okay, so maybe it's not a total wasteland, as there are still a few buildings standing in this burnt out French city, but the people are hungry, meat is scarce, everything is dinghy and lunch baggies of beans and legumes are used as currency. Yes, if you're a stick-up-your-ass critic like myself, you're probably smacking your head and asking out loud, "If they're hungry, why not just eat the damn beans?!", but don't worry, that little topic's brought up later in our flick. Speaking of which, let's take a cue from Bruce Campbell and "Sally forth!".

As already stated, our flick takes place in the future (near? far? who cares, it's all bombed out), in the remains of a small French town. More specifically, our story takes place in the remains of a small apartment building, run by a cruel and greedy bastard of a Frenchie named Clapet, who's also the local butcher. Clapet's recently lost his handyman, and if you catch the opening sequence in which the man of handiness in question (who looks like the genetic splicing of Tim Curry and Raul Julia's DNAs by French scientists) attempts to escape the building in the garbage whilst wrapped in soiled brown paper, you'll see how Clappy tends to mix his two professions... and goes through a lot of employees in doing so. Empty one handyman and low on his delicious meat reserves, the big sweaty madman's in need of a new repair guy. Enter Louison, a lovable but mildly retarded looking oaf who's come to the hotel to answer the call of the Help Wanted sign. He arrives on the scene pushing a taxi down the street one particularly grimy and ashen day, then proceeds to pay for his "cab ride" with his shoes... looks like Louis is bound to be a tragic type of hero who can't catch a break instead of the prized "action hero with bulging muscles" type of film hero all men seek to be, but lack the ambition (or bloodthirsty agent) to reach for. Louison's business at the delicatessen on the end of the world? He's here to answer the ad Clap put in the local newspaper for a new repairman... and yes, though the world has apparently ended, there's still a printed periodical in business. Turns out this little patch of Mad Max Heaven isn't the only survival spot in France, as they still receive mail and the morning paper from their mailman (referred to aptly as "Postman"... and no, he looks nothing like Kevin Costner) who rides there on his motorcycle from a nearby BIGGER patch of Mad Max Heaven.

Right, so, Louison's come for the job and Clap, despite our hero's small and semi-deformed frame, gives him the job. Hell, if he doesn't work out as a handyman, he's always got a spot as the blue plate special! Though Louis is obviously the epicenter of our tale, one of the more intriguing aspects of the film is it's branching out from the main plot to include many small subplots for the other tenants of the building, as they each have their own story to tell. Starting with Roger and Robert, two brothers who live in the building making small wooden cylinders that moo like cows when turned upside down... uhm, big market for that kind of shit in the "after the bomb" economy? Then again, these freaks like Jerry Lewis, so I guess something like a mooing tube could offer them the solace they need in these depressing times... morons. Anyway, Robert's in love with one of the upstairs tenants, Mrs. Aurore Interligator, who herself seems to have this problem with voices telling her that Robert's a pervert, an ass-wipe and a "panty-eater"... man, that's gotta be one pent up woman if her subconscious mind is being that crude! As if these anti-Robert voices weren't bad enough, Aurore's head echoes are also telling her to commit suicide, because she'd be better off dead, not unlike John Cusack. She can't do the simple thing and eat a bullet or perform delicate surgery on her throat with a chainsaw though, as for some reason Aurore feels inclined to make her suicide an overly complicated series of events. For instance, her first plan is hooking her sewing machine up to her doorbell, so that when Robert rings the bell, it will turn on the machine, which will pull a length of material on which sits a lamp. When pulled far enough, the lamp will then fall into the tub full of water where Aurore sits in wait of her ticket to Oblivion. This chick's like a bad Foghorn Leghorn cartoon! Note though, every one of these drawn out schemes fails her for one reason or another, including one very elaborate and hilarious attempts near the movie's end.

As for Aurore's husband Georges, he's soundly oblivious to everything like a Prozac™ junkie, immersed in a world of black and white television reruns and commercials for canned cheese... I don't even HAVE to make this shit up, it's all *whacked* out and crazy enough to begin with! Also in the building is the Tapioca family, who tie pans and tin cans to Grandma so she can't wander off too far. She ends up on the butcher's block eventually, allowing her daughter to give a very odd goodbye. As for father Tapioca, he makes his meager living from selling zany inventions, like a rat call and a bullshit detector, which is also known as a lie detector, not as a divining rod for cow excrement... though that shit is a good source for fuel... Finally, the building is also home to Clapet's daughter Julie and his mistress Plusse who pays for her room and board by tending Clappy's meat (and I don't mean his butcher business). Being Clapet's polar opposite, Julie immediately falls for the hapless Louison. No surprise as the sweet and innocent broads always fall for the clowns, which in this case is a literal thing, since Louison was actually a clown at one point in his life! Yes, with his mastery of soap bubble tricks and acrobatic debauchery of all shapes and sizes, Louis be the pimp of post-apocalyptic France!

Oh yeah, speaking of Julie, she's also the object of the Postman's affections, so let's talk a little more about this nigh-postal... uh... postal carrier... right. Honestly, I think this guy is a member of a postal foreign exchange program with post-apocalyptic America, because he's as disgruntled as they come! The guy can break glass by spitting at it! NO Frenchman has that kind of imposing he-man-itude! As further proof, the man carries a pistol and holds no qualms over sticking it in the face of anyone who touched mail that doesn't belong to them. Then again, fucking with the mail IS a federal offense and I guess they've gotta enforce it somehow. Shit, I wish my mailman were this devoted to his job, maybe those envelopes of Anthrax I'd ordered would've gotten to me instead of getting lost in New York or Florida. Looks like that whole "No rain, nor snow" credo doesn't hold up in cases of biological terrorism... Back to Louison, he's still blissfully ignorant to his future of hanging from a meathook for 15 bean sprouts/lb. whilst everyone else in the building is busy licking their chops in anticipation of his demise. As I said, he and Julie start to form a relationship as they have tea together and perform a duet, with Julie on her Cello and Louis on his musical saw... hey, the guy's an ex-circus clown in a Jeunet and Caro flick, what did you expect him to play?! I'm more or less shocked he doesn't play something even more obscure, like a blender or a toaster or a shoe horn...

Aware of her father's intentions, but not wanting to tell her new love machine the awful truth, Julie tries to convince Louis that he's better off moving far away from the building. When she fails and he insists on staying (especially now that he'd found a willing source of woman pie), Julie has no other option than to take to the sewers and employ the help of a group of underground revolutionaries known as the Troglodists... who or what they're revolting against is never really outlined, though I'm guessing they're just a bunch of panty-waist Vegans who have taken to the pipes to avoid the land of meat eaters. These are the guys who actually EAT the beans and corn and other "moneys" of the surface world, which fits them square in the cross hairs of guys like Clapet and Postman. Of course, being revolutionaries, these guys need capital to fund their "war", so they're not about to work for free. Julie's payment? No, there's no orgy guys, so put your 2 inch killers away until you can find some nice porn somewhere. No, Julie's paying the subterranean anarchists with the promise of her father's horded fortune hidden in the building's basement. When they confirm the stash, the rescue mission is on! Speaking of confirming the stash, picture this hilarious image when the two seekers do uncover it, as they begin to play Patty cake™ and chant, "Dangerous, what's that? Audacious, we're that! Courageous, I'll take three. Generous, you, you, you and me!". Hilarious AND inspiring!... sort of.

Before everything can go down as planned, Julie walks in on Louison showing Plusse his old act known as the "Tica Tica Walk". That's not an innuendo either, it's an actual comedy-variety act he used to do and there's little to no physical contact between himself and Madame Plusse, who is shaking some maracas (again, no innuendo) while Louison plays his ukulele and dances with an artificial leg. Obviously the extremely-jealous-to-the-point-of-insane type, Julie treats this like Lou cheating on her or something, unless doing comedy acts with other women is considered infidelity in post-nuke France. If she thinks that's bad, wait till she sees him performing his act on TV in reruns later, it'll be like he's gigoloing himself to the entire audience! That comedy whore! Eventually Julie forgives him and helps Louison fend of the butcher knife wielding Clappy on the roof amidst a thunderstorm. Meanwhile, the Trogs show how moronic they can be as they ensnare Plusse in their trap for Louison and take her back to their underground lair instead, not noticing the mix up until well after they open the trap up to reveal the busty broad inside. Then they set out to fulfill their contract properly and capture their intended target Louison.

As for the rest of the cast, Robert, after losing his leg to Clap's knife in a painful fuck up the night before, discovers the source of Aurore's "voices" as being his own brother Roger speaking through the building's pipes, encouraging Robert's love to kill herself for yet another reason that's never brought up. We leave the two struggling as upstairs, Aurore's latest and most elaborate attempt at suicide is foiled again, just like all the others. But, after Georges finds her and takes her to go and rest, he accidentally blows them (and the rest of the third floor!) up thanx to a gas leak and some faulty wiring in their light switch. See kids, dying's easy enough without intentionally trying to kill yourself and making it more complicated than it needs to be. As for the family, they go to Slap's aid, as they're gnawing at the bit to, uhm, gnaw on a bit of our hero. Postman also stops by in an effort to take Julie for his own, especially if it involves taking her by force. He also caps a couple Trogs for good measure. Trogs are like stray cats, you can't help but ventilate one or two on occasion, it's too alluring! Elsewhere, Louison and Julie have found themselves cornered in Louis's bathroom while the rest of the tenants hack down his front door with their arsenal of cutlery and the third floor continues to burn from the Interligators' little kitchen mishap. Blocking off all available outlets, Louis busts open the water pipe with intentions of flooding the room, which works pretty damn good in flushing the bad guys out of the apartment and down the stairs like a nest of hungry rats... and collapses the bathroom floor as well.

After regaining his senses, Clap returns to finish what he started. When he misses his target (Louison, grasping desperately to his toilet, dangling over what used to be the bathroom floor and is now just a big hole) with his faithful butchering tool, Plusse, escaping from the Trog base in the sewers, enters with more ammo for her big greasy lover: Louison's boomerang knife the Australian! Clappy doesn't realize it's a returning blade though, and well, let's say he winds up with a splitting frontal lobotomy of a headache when he tosses it. Now, did Plusse know that this was going to happen? She did see Louison use the knife earlier in the film, so she knew it would fly back to it's thrower, but did she just forget to tell Clapet this helpful tidbit of info, or did she do it KNOWING that it would return and catch him with his pants around his ankles and his big head vulnerable? Yet again, something not covered that I guess we're supposed to figure out for ourselves. Sure, Plusse could've done it intentionally, because she hated the dirty old freak, but he was her source of meat and housing, so where's she gonna go now? Where she ends up is another mystery left to be unsolved, as from this scene we jump to our epilogue, where Louison and Julie sit on top of the delicatessen, playing another duet and living happily ever after as the movie ends and the credits role... Okay, and what happened to the Tapiocas? Someone should write out the definition of "loose ends" to Caro and Jeunet to keep handy for future ventures...

Despite these little plot holes and story farts, the flick is a very entertaining 99 minutes of French cinema! The look is very surreal, much like any Jeunet film with little touches and much care given to enhance the overall appearance. Makeup, facial expressions, lighting, it's all beautiful. Also, much like any other Jeunet film (such as City Of Lost Children or Amelie), the emphasis is on heart and emotion, a sort of "spiritual lightness" to everything that makes you smile in spite of the hemorrhoids crawling all over your ass... unless that's just me. It's all so dark and surreal, and yet so beautiful and charming at the same time. It's not "dark and surreal" in the David Lynch/Cronenberg sense, but in a sense that kinda reminds you of M. Night Shymalan on a small French budget... and without any obnoxious children to muck up the screen. Best scene? The colloidal orchestra by far. Explanation? While Clap's puttin the hot dog to Plusse on her squeaking bed, everyone else in the building begins to do something that makes noise in rhythm to it, creating an odd and highly amusing little do-it-yourself orchestra that just serves to once again show off the directors' immense talents for entertainment. As for the cast? Well, Cheech & Chong fans might recognize Jean-Claude Dreyfus who played Clapet as the same goon who played the fetish frenzied Marquis Du Hickey in one of their few non-drug centralized movies, The Corsican Brothers. He's done MANY other movies too, but they're mostly French flicks I'll never lay a single eyeball on in my elongated lifespan. Dominique Pinon, who played our deformed little hero, would go on to be featured in numerous future projects of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, including his critically acclaimed City Of Lost Children and Amelie and his mostly panned-by-fans Alien Ressurection... I still don't understand the story behind Jeunet getting that job... As for the rest of the crew, they did lots of French stuff that, again, I will never watch. Overall? Spiffy flick with lots of heart, well made with enough of a twisted sense to itself to set it apart from pretty much any other movie you're likely to find. Check it out post haste mortals!