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| Dominique
Pinon, Pascal Benezech, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus):
Good morning, postman.
Postman (Chick Ortega): Good morning, butcher.
In a city wasteland, the inhabitants
of a tenement building conspire to eat the latest top floor tenant.
 Rarely
have cinematic débuts exhibited such controlled confidence
in exuberantly visual design as that of former French directing
team of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. Delicatessen was
the first of the two memorable feature-length films they made together
before Jeunet departed for Hollywood on his own to direct Alien:
Resurrection. It wasn't however until her returned to France
to produce and direct Amélie that he would achieve
international success and recognition in any great measure.
But beside the grand scale of The City of Lost Children,
the Hollywood production values of Alien: Resurrection and
the whimsical cuteness of Amélie, Delicatessen
remains the most consistently surprising and infectious collection
of oddball characters and comic book-inspired sight gags. The simplicity
of its premise makes Delicatessen much more focused than
the more ambitious City, while its sense of humor maintains
a sharp edge that balances the film superbly on the right side of
sentimentality (to which Amélie succumbed all too
easily). The fact that the film ultimately never truly succeeds
in becoming anything more than a collection of clever and sometimes
brilliant bits of comedy material is the only thing detrimental
to its final quality. |
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As yet unavailable for Region 1, identical
Region 2 releases are on release in several countries including
the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK. The Dutch release
served as the basis for this review.
The anamorphic widescreen image
is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 1.85:1. The restrained color
palette adequately reflects the original cinematography, though
it seems overly drained of color on occasion. It is however marred
in part by an overabundance of grain along with quite a bit of wear
and tear to the source print.
The Dolby Surround sound mix is missing the fierce directionality
of a discrete multi-channel mix, but has enough strong surround
presence to convince.
The most interesting supplement
on this release is clearly director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's audio
commentary track. Jeunet isn't joined by his co-director Marc
Caro, who apparently detests commentary tracks, but the Frenchman
turns out to have more than enough energetically told informative
background to sustain interest effortlessly throughout. The
track is in French with English subtitles.
Other extras include "From the Archives of Jean-Pierre Jeunet",
a collection of behind-the-scenes footage and audition tapes, running
approx. eight minutes. "Fine Slices from Diane Bertrand"
holds even more behind-the-scenes footage, produced by way of sneak
preview before the film's theatrical release. Very different from
US promotions, this gives lots of footage from the filming. An amusing
and highly original selection of trailers rounds out the
extras.  The
animated menu screens are based on CG-rendered recreations of interiors
from the film, with navigational options hidden away on fairly minute
items. It's hard to make out what it is you're selecting, but one
soon gets the hang of the system, and the detailed presentation
is truly dazzling.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
February 7, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on Delicatessen.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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