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Parents' Guide to

Delicatessen

By Charles Cassady Jr., Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Dark comedy-fantasy about cannibalism isn't for kids.

Movie R 1991 97 minutes
Delicatessen Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In a dusty, autumnal landscape -- maybe the aftermath of nuclear war or other global environmental disaster -- on the outskirts of a city, a semi-ruined apartment tenement stands with a delicatessen on the first floor run by the butcher-landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). With livestock and crops apparently extinct, people in this struggling society subsist on either hoarded grains or by eating other people. Clapet's solution: He continually lures job-seekers to work as handymen, whom he soon murders to turn into the meat served to the building's weird mini-community of tenants. The latest applicant to Clapet's want-ad is Louison (Dominique Pinon), an impish ex-circus clown, unemployed since his chimp partner was killed and eaten after their act. Louison's good nature and talents endear him to the tenants, especially Clapet's estranged, adult daughter Julie. She contacts an anti-cannibalism underground resistance to rescue the innocent clown before he becomes a morsel.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say Not yet rated
Kids say (1 ):

A sardonic satire on what happens when the dog-eat-dog world becomes a human-eat-human world instead, DELICATESSEN is a film best left to older teens and adults. The movie comes across like a Tim Burton fantasy aimed squarely at grownups. There's a playfulness and whimsy to all the grotesqueries, but it seems geared more to adult attention spans and intellects, as the loose-jointed plot often turns to people doing (or being) puzzling things, like a weird old man in the building's flooded basement reigning over colonies of frogs and snails, or a last-minute revelation that a motiveless murder plot had been afoot all along amidst two minor characters. There are few easy answers -- and the ending leaves things a bit up in the air, in more ways than one. But the film casts a weird spell that is not soon forgotten.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the message of the film. Does it say anything about the way the world is now?

  • Are the butcher Clapet and his clients "evil," or just victims of circumstances and desperation, as Louison suggests (before he finds out that he's on the menu)?

  • Talk to young people about vegetarianism. Does this movie make a strong anti-meat, animal-rights statement? Does it make viewers feel differently about what they are eating?

Movie Details

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