Delicatessen

Watching Man Bites Dog the other day made me realize that I’ve been meaning to check out Delicatessen for a while ... and then wondered if I had seen it before ... it all seemed so familiar... (Did I really see it before?) The setting is some post-apocalyptic France seemingly circa 1950, with much if not all of civilization, politics and economy burned to cinders. The plot centers on an apartment building run by the local butcher. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I add that most animals have become extinct due to hunting, and that therefore the butcher doesn’t trade in animal meat, if you know what I mean... The best-known sequence is also the funniest, in which we see and especially hear tenants in the building play cello along a metronome, pump a bicycle wheel, beat a carpet, paint the ceiling, knit, drill holes in those little animal-call boxes, all in the rhythm set by the landlord making love to his mistress atop the squeaking bedsprings... Hahahaha! Definitely worth watching if you care for dark humor, but you have to be in the mood for weirdness... (And I haven’t even mentioned the Troglodists!)

Man Bites Dog

Are you ready for a satirical black & white pseudo-documentary (“mocku‐mentary”) about a serial killer? You may know this one as “Man Bites Dog,” but the original title is “C’est arrivé près de chez vous (It Happened Close to Your Home).” I wish I could say I find it disturbing, as I feel about watching Dexter... but I rather find this flick’s pitch black humor funny. Let me illustrate: the opening scene takes place in a train where a woman passes by a man, who strangles her with a string of some kind, they fall on the seats, she struggles in vain without uttering a sound, and then dies atop the man smiling. Okay, so you probably don’t find this funny, but if you do, you’ve just as sick a mind as I do!

The way the guy talks and keeps yapping with his twisted logic, then cheerful, then offended, boisterous and loud, grotesque and endearing! Heehee! For instance, he gets all worked up about urban renewal. “How can you design low-cost housing projects in total disregards of aesthetics?” he cries, going on about cosmetic cherry trees, and violently red bricks, “violence is the scourge of society,” he can’t accept it, “je suis désolé (I’m sorry),” he cries! Hahahah! He never stops talking, about poetry, pigeons and politics, art and recollections of younger days, music, money and murder. With increasingly chaotic violence he kills indiscriminately – and the members of the film crew become more and more involved, drinking and dining with him, helping him dump bodies, chase victims, and worse... Not your average light fare – sure no chick flick for a first date... Teehee!