Pavel Novotny

Delicatessen (1991) is a French black comedy film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, starring Dominique Pinon. It is set in a post-apocalyptic apartment building in a France of an ambiguous time period. The story focuses on the tenants of the apartment and their desperate bids to survive. Among these characters is a newly arrived tenant, who arrives to replace a tenant whose reason for departure is initially unclear. The butcher, Clapet, is the leader of the apartment who strives to keep control and balance in the apartment.

It is largely a character-based film, with much of the interest being gained from each tenants own particular idiosyncrasies and their relationship to each other.

Delicatessen begins in a dilapidated apartment building in rural post-apocalyptic 1950s France. Food is in short supply, with grain used as currency and animal populations dwindling, having been hunted to extinction. At the foot of the apartment building is a butcher's shop, run by the landlord, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who posts job opportunities in the "Hard Times" paper as means to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat that he sells to his tenants.

Following the "departure" of the last worker, unemployed circus clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) arrives to apply for the vacant position. During his routine maintenance, he gradually befriends Julie Clapet (Marie-Laure Dougnac), which slowly blossoms into a romantic relationship. Aware of her father's motives and Louison's imminent death, Julie descends into the sewers to make contact with the feared Troglodytes, a vegetarian sub-group of French rebels, whom she convinces to help rescue Louison.

Following the death and butchering (for meat) of an old woman, the Troglodytes return, and Mr. Clapet, with the remaining cannibalistic tenants of the building, storm Louison's room in an attempt to murder him. Louison, now aided by Julie, resists and injures many of the bloodthirsty tenants by flooding his apartment. He is able to narrowly avoid death as Clapet inadvertently kills himself with Louison's weapon. The film ends with Louison and Julie enjoying each other's company on the roof of the now peaceful apartment building.