DELICATESSEN

France, 1990, 99 minutes, Colour.
Dominique Pinon.
Directed by Jean- Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.

Delicatessen is an extraordinary and offbeat piece of French film-making, winning many awards in 1991. Its directors Jean-Pierre? Jeunet and Marc Caro were originally cartoonists and makers of video clips. Caro storyboarded the look of the film, Jeunet directed the actors.

The film is set in an apocalyptic futuristic apartment block - looking like a city blitzed during World War Two but having the pastel colours of a fiery apocalyptic world. However, most of the action takes place inside the building (which is entered in a blue velvet, David Lynch entry into pipes and listening to voices). The plot of the film is also reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the settings also pay homage to many of the French features of the '30s and '40s and such directors as Marcel Carne and Rene Clair. The film abounds in allusions to the cinema tradition.

The characters are all caricatures - but highly entertaining. The central character, a butcher like Sweeney Todd, feeds the people in his apartment block with human food, his assistants who in turn are butchered. There is his glamorous mistress, his myopic daughter who plays the cello and who falls in love with the new assistant, a circus clown played by Dominic Pinon (the white-haired villain from Diva). There are a married couple where the wife is continually attempting suicide with more and more elaborate attempts, all of which fail. There are quite a range of eccentric characters within the building, a sinister postman outside and a group of comic revolutionaries in the literal underground who attempt raids but who fail in their raids (direct echoes of Robert de Niro's character in Brazil.

Much of the humour is black, much of it very funny - especially the suicide attempts. However, the film is so well thought out that interiors combine with a sense of atmosphere for the caricature characters. The film combines the future with the past and gives an interesting interpretation of a collapsed society, the malice of human nature - although not without hope at the end.

(Other films which echo the themes of the cannibalistic butcher here are Sweeney Todd, Eat the Rich, Eating Raoul, Parents, Soylent Green and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.)

1. Impact of the film? Awards? The blend of content and style?

2. The world of the future, society collapsing, the physical collapse of buildings and the city? Memories of World War Two and bombings and blitzes? The underground revolutionaries and the sewers and warehouses? The apartment block and its look, staircases, pipes? The shop? The blend of the real and the fantastic?

3. The animation and cartoon background of the directors, their work in design, characters and caricatures, episodes, plot, action and dialogue?

4. The importance of sounds and music? The range of rhythms, the concerto of sounds - during the lovemaking with the mat hitting, cello playing etcetera? The testing of the springs by Louison and the mistress of the butcher? The importance of music and sounds?

5. The influences on the film: Sweeney Todd, Brazil, the films of David Lynch, the French classics of the '30s and '40s?

6. The opening, the entry into the film, into their house? The experience of the sounds, the assistant wrapping himself and escaping, only to be caught in the garbage? Becoming the food? The shop, the "delicatessen" sign? The customers, their attitudes, meat? Image of society?

7. The butcher, his cool killing of his assistants, his mistress, the sexual encounters? His daughter and their clash? The plan to take on Louison and kill him? The execution of the plan, Louison not hearing, Tapioca and his mother, her disappearance and the family's grief, yet taking the meat? The customers and their anticipation? The brother losing his leg? The final plan, the television antenna, the storm and the fight on the roof? His fall, the final confrontation with Louison, the flood and the boomerang, "The Australian" killing him? Retribution?

8. The mistress, her place in the household, relationship to the butcher, to the daughter? The lovemaking, the testing of the springs with Louison? In a compromising position with Louison? The irony of her being kidnapped, the troglodytes, her escape and emergence? Joining in the hunt against Julie and Louison?

9. Louison, the clown, Dr Livingstone, his routines, memories of his chimpanzee companion? Entering the place, the butcher, the assistant, his apartment, painting the rhythms, falling? Helping Julie with the box? The date, her awkwardness his explanation of himself, the tea, asleep and escaping the voices? His rehearsals - with the axe in his head? The television performance, Julie watching - after the compromising dance with the mistress? Going onto the roof, the antenna, the fight? The attack of the apartment-dwellers on the door? His ingenuity in the bathroom, the flood? His previous use of The Australian? His using it against the butcher? The final glimpse with Julie and the happy ending?

10. Julie, her antagonism towards her father, myopic, playing the cello - in the orchestrated sounds? The encounter with Louison, preparing for the visit, taking her glasses off, smashing things (and having doubles), her admitting the truth? Her jealousy? Her decision to go to the troglodytes? Her being saved during the flood - the intensity of the relationship with Louison, especially when it seemed they would die?

11. The woman and her suicide attempts, the comic complexity of each of the attempts and their failure? Audiences enjoying and laughing at the suicide attempts? Her hearing of the voices, the brothers and their haunting her? Her relationship with her husband? Aristocratic, their supercilious looks? The effect of the voices? The failure - and the ultimate explosion and their deaths?

12. The two brothers, the meat, the gadgets, the voices, the brother losing his leg, the clash, their joining in the pursuit of Louison?

13. Tapioca and his family, the condoms, the bike and the orchestrated sounds? The grandmother and her knitting, her death? The mother, her brutality? The children and their mischief - and surviving?

14. The troglodytes, the underground movement, the parody on the inefficient spies and special squads? Julie going to the underground, the corn as the exchange rate and their need for corn? The plan, inept, in the house, the troglodyte getting shot? Kidnapping the wrong person? Regrouping? Their personalities, the chief? The battle?

15. The world of Delicatessen as a microcosm, good and evil, malice and greed, squalor, life and death, hope - and an ironic glimpse of the future in the light of the past?