Delicatessen

In Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Juenet casts his usual eclectic assortment of characters, including a Sweeney Todd like murderous butcher, an ex-circus performer, and two men who manufacture cans which make animal sounds—to name a few.  An apartment building in post-apocalyptic France serves as the fun house in which the lives of these characters collide in an absurd series of events.  One of the most strikingly aesthetic qualities of the film is Juenet’s use of color.  The entire film has a very warm quality; some scenes appear to glow orange while others seems to be infected with a surreal toxic lime green light.

  

The film is periodically punctuated with more still shots of the apocalyptic city landscape showing decrepit buildings shrouded in a dreamlike orange mist.  The green illumination is more prevalent in scenes depicting water—either in the underground world or in the bathroom flood scene.  In the sewers and tunnels of the underground the water takes on the color of electric mountain dew.  

In the bathroom scene, the water takes on the color of sea green emerald.  In each instance, Jeunet acts as a painter, heightening the saturation of colors in reality to achieve a certain ambience.  

While the entire film takes on this warm glow, Jeunet also makes specific color choices for set.  He frequently makes use of green and red in clothing, objects, and rooms.  For example, the kitchen is almost entirely green—both in the objects it contains and way it is filmed.  Characters in the kitchen will frequently be wearing burgundy.  There is a dramatic juxtaposition of complimentary colors that is apparent yet subtle.  This effect creates a feeling of surreal implacability--the setting is familiar yet very strange.

            This feeling of implacability is also echoed in the set objects that Jeunet selects.  While the film is obviously set in the distant future, there is a 1940s kitsch quality to the objects shown in it, creating an anachronistic paradox where the viewer is unsure of where to position himself.  There is a certain emphasis on the materiality of objects in film.  In the opening credits, the camera slowing pans over an assortment of odd trinkets, mementos, lost toys, mysterious artifacts, and obsolescent technologies.  Each object is so specific and poignant that it takes on a personality of its own, each with its own history.  Later in the film, there is a sequence of scenes focusing on the television.  The flickering of the old fashioned television seems to reference both the materiality of television set, the screen, and of cinema itself.  During the final fight sequence, there is as much footage of the television as there is of the characters; the television itself becomes an actor in the film, illustrating just how Jeunet manipulates film to create surreal situations where objects become actors and time becomes implacable.