Review: Delicatessen

Darkly comic bizarre sci-fi from the same team as The City of Lost Children.  It's the everyday post-apocalyptic tale of a clown seeking work, and who finds it above a butcher's shop where humans are on the menu.

I have an odd history with Delicatessen which made it seem even more of a hallucinatory experience that it actually is.

It was a regular choice of the inmates of a shared house I lived in during the early 90s. Inevitably, they wouldn't actually chuck the well worn VHS tape into the player until around 1am and I would usually doze off sometime during the first half hour and wake up with a jump to the shouting, madness and confusion of the last ten minutes.

I finally watched it through during a 24 hour science-fiction film festival at Manchester's Cornerhouse cinema several years later. But given it was the last film in the programme - and presented at around 8am the following morning, I didn't remember much of that viewing either.

The good news is that it turns out to be every bit as horrifically wonderful as my dreams and half-memories had constructed it to be.

It is also gives me hope that one day I will complete a viewing of Frozen. About five attempts so far, including once with a room full of Filipinos who sang all of the songs providing a uniquely immersive experience.  Even so, I have not made it further than the principal building some ice palace before I fall asleep.


Verdict: French Cannibal Holocaust.