Before his sweet Amelie, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (and co-director Marc Caro) made this surreal black comedy about a post-apocalyptic butcher who has had to improvise in order to stay in business. Yes, I mean cannibalism. Despite the bleak subject matter, Delicatessen is stuffed with magical, life-affirming moments – the movie drips with blood and irony. Jeunet has clear influences – namely animation and the comic anarchy of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil – yet he and Caro have still created a wicked, wondrous world of their own.
