The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
With Amelie's recent success and the American interest in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's directorial flair, French cinema has never been more relevant. So make yourselves comfy because it's time to delve back into the warm, nestling folds of French cinema. But don't worry, we're not going back far, only to 1991, when Jeunet's landmark film 'the Delicatessen' hit screens across Europe. The colour of its comedy is a close to pitch black as you can get and it remains a funny, relevant film even 10 years on.
A recurring theme in Jeunet's work is the future. Yet he's one of those people who thinks that it's a rather dystopian place. Yes, we find ourselves in a not so gay Paris. It's post-apocalypse and all the animals are gone. The film doesn't focus on the sad demise of the RSPCA; no it gets down to a real meaty issue - there's no food. Unless that is you're a vegetarian who likes grain. Indeed grain becomes a currency. Of course there are still some out there who need to satisfy their carnal desires. And their tastes are catered for by the butcher Clapet, played by Jean-Claude Drefyus. He stocks his charcuterie with the choicest of morcels, but where is he getting it from? Mais oui, his fellow Frenchmen. In the appartment block in which he lives the families struggle to pay for this most valuable of foodstuffs, fully aware that it comes from the
handymen Clapet employs.
So cannibalism is a prominent image in the film. But it's not serious, indeed the death of the first handyman is actually funny, and that is what we see as the film opens. A man dressed from head to toe in newspapers crawling through the piping to the dustbins, where he hides himself in an empty bin. The waste removal men arrive and just as this handyman is about to make his escape, Clapet lifts up the lid and drops a cigarette in. You hear an "aie!" from
inside the bin and then darkness. Then slowly a lid is lifted, and we see the worried eyes of the handyman staring out from the newspapers. Then the lid is lifted off completely and there stands Clapet, who promptly brings down his cleaver on the camera. The start encapsulates everything you could want to know about the film; it's surreal; it's beautifully shot; it's got you hooked.
This film is populated by the greats of the French movie scene, I am reliably informed, and even if you didn't know who they were then it's pretty obvious that they weren't plucked from obscurity given the strength of their performances. Yet strangely these merge into the background. It's hard to explain but 'the Delicatessen' is more an experience than a film. When you watch it you will be enraptured, mesmerised and enchanted all at once. That still doesn't clarify the films all-encompassing greatness but it comes close.
The film is shot partly in sepia, and partly in normal colour. For those of you who don't know sepia is the browny-gold tint you see in some old photos; it was the stepping stone between black and white and colour. This lends the film a certain beauty, almost nostalgia and this is important to the film. You see, the world which these characters inhabit is not just dilapidated, but sinister. You have the cannibalistic inhabitants of the flat, the psychotic postman, the suicidal Aurore, a mad man in the basement who lives in a festering pit of frogs and snails, Underground are the mole-like vegetarian resistance. This world is so sinister, so macabre that it seems almost incapable of beauty. Yet two characters prove that even in the blackest of situations beauty can flourish. Those moments are shot in the nostalgic sepia, encapsulating the beauty of a past, pre-apocalyptic era.
All the moments of beauty are created by two characters, the Butcher's daughter, Juile, and his new handyman Louison. Louison is a retired clown and brings moments of magic into the dreary life of the appartment block with his tricks and jokes while Julie admires from a distance. In their first meeting she decides that he will not find her attractive if she wears her glasses, so despite being myopic to the point of near blindness she attempts to entertain Louison without them. The camera follows her as she practices everything she will do when she meets him so that she cando the same routine without glasses. However, all goes awry when Louison inadvertently sits in the wrong chair and disrupts her rehearsed actions. It is moments of comic beauty like these that elevate this film above so many others. For a moment you forget the shattered buildings and industrial yellows of the outerworld and become absorbed into the beauty of these sepia-shot scenes.
'The Delicatessen' is first and foremost a love story but place this in a strange, yet fanatastic world and you have one of the most original films made this decade. It's more famous successor, 'the City of the Lost Children' took this blue-print and built on it, but doesn't manage to achieve what 'the Delicatessen' does; an immersive and emotional film of rare and extraordinary beauty. Anyone doubting this should try and see the film's legendary trailer, available on the internet for thsoe with fast connections:
www.movie-list.com/d/delicatessen.shtml
This features the film's most famous scene. The butcher and his girlfriend are on the top floor of the appartment block on a creaky bed doing what birds and bees do. The creaks of the springs create a regular rhythm, which everyone in the block keeps time to. There's a woman beating a mat in time, Julie's metronome clicks in time to the creaks and she plays her cello at that speed, Louison paints a ceiling by rocking backwards and forwards in time to the beat, some toy makers operate their machines in time and a man pumps up his bicycle tire in time as well. The camera cuts between all of them at an ever increasing pace as the rhythm becomes more and more frenetic, until the "climactic moment" when the cello string snaps, the tire explodes, Louison falls off the stool he was perched on and Clapet the butcher lets out a long, loud moan. If you are asked for the best scene in any film then this is a likely contender. Beautifully surreal stuff.
Maybe you caught 'Amelie' when it came out to such rave reviews. Maybe you like the last Alien film. Maybe you've seen 'the City of the Lost Children'. If you have then track back to one of Jeunet's first and best films. As with any great foreign language film the subtitles are utterly irrelevant because you don't notive that you're reading them. I would go as far as to say that you could watch this film without subtitles and still be utterly enthralled by it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; 'the Delicatessen' is an experience, and one that you won't forget. So pop into the dusty foreign language section of your local Blockbuster and dig it out. You won't regret it, I promise...
A recurring theme in Jeunet's work is the future. Yet he's one of those people who thinks that it's a rather dystopian place. Yes, we find ourselves in a not so gay Paris. It's post-apocalypse and all the animals are gone. The film doesn't focus on the sad demise of the RSPCA; no it gets down to a real meaty issue - there's no food. Unless that is you're a vegetarian who likes grain. Indeed grain becomes a currency. Of course there are still some out there who need to satisfy their carnal desires. And their tastes are catered for by the butcher Clapet, played by Jean-Claude Drefyus. He stocks his charcuterie with the choicest of morcels, but where is he getting it from? Mais oui, his fellow Frenchmen. In the appartment block in which he lives the families struggle to pay for this most valuable of foodstuffs, fully aware that it comes from the
handymen Clapet employs.
So cannibalism is a prominent image in the film. But it's not serious, indeed the death of the first handyman is actually funny, and that is what we see as the film opens. A man dressed from head to toe in newspapers crawling through the piping to the dustbins, where he hides himself in an empty bin. The waste removal men arrive and just as this handyman is about to make his escape, Clapet lifts up the lid and drops a cigarette in. You hear an "aie!" from
inside the bin and then darkness. Then slowly a lid is lifted, and we see the worried eyes of the handyman staring out from the newspapers. Then the lid is lifted off completely and there stands Clapet, who promptly brings down his cleaver on the camera. The start encapsulates everything you could want to know about the film; it's surreal; it's beautifully shot; it's got you hooked.
This film is populated by the greats of the French movie scene, I am reliably informed, and even if you didn't know who they were then it's pretty obvious that they weren't plucked from obscurity given the strength of their performances. Yet strangely these merge into the background. It's hard to explain but 'the Delicatessen' is more an experience than a film. When you watch it you will be enraptured, mesmerised and enchanted all at once. That still doesn't clarify the films all-encompassing greatness but it comes close.
The film is shot partly in sepia, and partly in normal colour. For those of you who don't know sepia is the browny-gold tint you see in some old photos; it was the stepping stone between black and white and colour. This lends the film a certain beauty, almost nostalgia and this is important to the film. You see, the world which these characters inhabit is not just dilapidated, but sinister. You have the cannibalistic inhabitants of the flat, the psychotic postman, the suicidal Aurore, a mad man in the basement who lives in a festering pit of frogs and snails, Underground are the mole-like vegetarian resistance. This world is so sinister, so macabre that it seems almost incapable of beauty. Yet two characters prove that even in the blackest of situations beauty can flourish. Those moments are shot in the nostalgic sepia, encapsulating the beauty of a past, pre-apocalyptic era.
All the moments of beauty are created by two characters, the Butcher's daughter, Juile, and his new handyman Louison. Louison is a retired clown and brings moments of magic into the dreary life of the appartment block with his tricks and jokes while Julie admires from a distance. In their first meeting she decides that he will not find her attractive if she wears her glasses, so despite being myopic to the point of near blindness she attempts to entertain Louison without them. The camera follows her as she practices everything she will do when she meets him so that she cando the same routine without glasses. However, all goes awry when Louison inadvertently sits in the wrong chair and disrupts her rehearsed actions. It is moments of comic beauty like these that elevate this film above so many others. For a moment you forget the shattered buildings and industrial yellows of the outerworld and become absorbed into the beauty of these sepia-shot scenes.
'The Delicatessen' is first and foremost a love story but place this in a strange, yet fanatastic world and you have one of the most original films made this decade. It's more famous successor, 'the City of the Lost Children' took this blue-print and built on it, but doesn't manage to achieve what 'the Delicatessen' does; an immersive and emotional film of rare and extraordinary beauty. Anyone doubting this should try and see the film's legendary trailer, available on the internet for thsoe with fast connections:
www.movie-list.com/d/delicatessen.shtml
This features the film's most famous scene. The butcher and his girlfriend are on the top floor of the appartment block on a creaky bed doing what birds and bees do. The creaks of the springs create a regular rhythm, which everyone in the block keeps time to. There's a woman beating a mat in time, Julie's metronome clicks in time to the creaks and she plays her cello at that speed, Louison paints a ceiling by rocking backwards and forwards in time to the beat, some toy makers operate their machines in time and a man pumps up his bicycle tire in time as well. The camera cuts between all of them at an ever increasing pace as the rhythm becomes more and more frenetic, until the "climactic moment" when the cello string snaps, the tire explodes, Louison falls off the stool he was perched on and Clapet the butcher lets out a long, loud moan. If you are asked for the best scene in any film then this is a likely contender. Beautifully surreal stuff.
Maybe you caught 'Amelie' when it came out to such rave reviews. Maybe you like the last Alien film. Maybe you've seen 'the City of the Lost Children'. If you have then track back to one of Jeunet's first and best films. As with any great foreign language film the subtitles are utterly irrelevant because you don't notive that you're reading them. I would go as far as to say that you could watch this film without subtitles and still be utterly enthralled by it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; 'the Delicatessen' is an experience, and one that you won't forget. So pop into the dusty foreign language section of your local Blockbuster and dig it out. You won't regret it, I promise...
Try Amores Perros, it's a mexican film that is made up of three stories. One is physically violent, the other is emotionally violent and the third is a combination of both. It's subtitled but you really don't notice after a while. It's an excellent film and a worthy addition to anyone's DVD collection.
The Three Colours Triology got into the Top 100 Films of all time voted by Channel 4 viewers. Personally, I think I'm probably to young to appreciate them and would find them boring anyways. Going from the normal dose of violence to something that I'd have to read subtitles to be able to take notice of would kill me, that is why I disliked the Godfather.
If I told you that Leon was the worst film that I've seen by a French director and that was not an insult, you might get an idea of how brilliant films such as 'the Delicatessen', 'La Haine', 'City of the Lost Children' and the Three Colours Trilogy are. Each of those is a masterpiece and they more than hold their weight against American opposition.
Well, I don't know anything about French films but Jean Reno is one hell of an actor and Ronin and Leno showed that. Godzilla was the one film he was given a stupid character and wasn't able to show his real ability but the rest were inspirational.
*Tries to think of a French film*
Ummmmmm.....
*Tries to think of a French film*
Ummmmmm.....
POP (first + last one)
someone talk to me about French films. Please!
someone talk to me about French films. Please!
With Amelie's recent success and the American interest in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's directorial flair, French cinema has never been more relevant. So make yourselves comfy because it's time to delve back into the warm, nestling folds of French cinema. But don't worry, we're not going back far, only to 1991, when Jeunet's landmark film 'the Delicatessen' hit screens across Europe. The colour of its comedy is a close to pitch black as you can get and it remains a funny, relevant film even 10 years on.
A recurring theme in Jeunet's work is the future. Yet he's one of those people who thinks that it's a rather dystopian place. Yes, we find ourselves in a not so gay Paris. It's post-apocalypse and all the animals are gone. The film doesn't focus on the sad demise of the RSPCA; no it gets down to a real meaty issue - there's no food. Unless that is you're a vegetarian who likes grain. Indeed grain becomes a currency. Of course there are still some out there who need to satisfy their carnal desires. And their tastes are catered for by the butcher Clapet, played by Jean-Claude Drefyus. He stocks his charcuterie with the choicest of morcels, but where is he getting it from? Mais oui, his fellow Frenchmen. In the appartment block in which he lives the families struggle to pay for this most valuable of foodstuffs, fully aware that it comes from the
handymen Clapet employs.
So cannibalism is a prominent image in the film. But it's not serious, indeed the death of the first handyman is actually funny, and that is what we see as the film opens. A man dressed from head to toe in newspapers crawling through the piping to the dustbins, where he hides himself in an empty bin. The waste removal men arrive and just as this handyman is about to make his escape, Clapet lifts up the lid and drops a cigarette in. You hear an "aie!" from
inside the bin and then darkness. Then slowly a lid is lifted, and we see the worried eyes of the handyman staring out from the newspapers. Then the lid is lifted off completely and there stands Clapet, who promptly brings down his cleaver on the camera. The start encapsulates everything you could want to know about the film; it's surreal; it's beautifully shot; it's got you hooked.
This film is populated by the greats of the French movie scene, I am reliably informed, and even if you didn't know who they were then it's pretty obvious that they weren't plucked from obscurity given the strength of their performances. Yet strangely these merge into the background. It's hard to explain but 'the Delicatessen' is more an experience than a film. When you watch it you will be enraptured, mesmerised and enchanted all at once. That still doesn't clarify the films all-encompassing greatness but it comes close.
The film is shot partly in sepia, and partly in normal colour. For those of you who don't know sepia is the browny-gold tint you see in some old photos; it was the stepping stone between black and white and colour. This lends the film a certain beauty, almost nostalgia and this is important to the film. You see, the world which these characters inhabit is not just dilapidated, but sinister. You have the cannibalistic inhabitants of the flat, the psychotic postman, the suicidal Aurore, a mad man in the basement who lives in a festering pit of frogs and snails, Underground are the mole-like vegetarian resistance. This world is so sinister, so macabre that it seems almost incapable of beauty. Yet two characters prove that even in the blackest of situations beauty can flourish. Those moments are shot in the nostalgic sepia, encapsulating the beauty of a past, pre-apocalyptic era.
All the moments of beauty are created by two characters, the Butcher's daughter, Juile, and his new handyman Louison. Louison is a retired clown and brings moments of magic into the dreary life of the appartment block with his tricks and jokes while Julie admires from a distance. In their first meeting she decides that he will not find her attractive if she wears her glasses, so despite being myopic to the point of near blindness she attempts to entertain Louison without them. The camera follows her as she practices everything she will do when she meets him so that she cando the same routine without glasses. However, all goes awry when Louison inadvertently sits in the wrong chair and disrupts her rehearsed actions. It is moments of comic beauty like these that elevate this film above so many others. For a moment you forget the shattered buildings and industrial yellows of the outerworld and become absorbed into the beauty of these sepia-shot scenes.
'The Delicatessen' is first and foremost a love story but place this in a strange, yet fanatastic world and you have one of the most original films made this decade. It's more famous successor, 'the City of the Lost Children' took this blue-print and built on it, but doesn't manage to achieve what 'the Delicatessen' does; an immersive and emotional film of rare and extraordinary beauty. Anyone doubting this should try and see the film's legendary trailer, available on the internet for thsoe with fast connections:
www.movie-list.com/d/delicatessen.shtml
This features the film's most famous scene. The butcher and his girlfriend are on the top floor of the appartment block on a creaky bed doing what birds and bees do. The creaks of the springs create a regular rhythm, which everyone in the block keeps time to. There's a woman beating a mat in time, Julie's metronome clicks in time to the creaks and she plays her cello at that speed, Louison paints a ceiling by rocking backwards and forwards in time to the beat, some toy makers operate their machines in time and a man pumps up his bicycle tire in time as well. The camera cuts between all of them at an ever increasing pace as the rhythm becomes more and more frenetic, until the "climactic moment" when the cello string snaps, the tire explodes, Louison falls off the stool he was perched on and Clapet the butcher lets out a long, loud moan. If you are asked for the best scene in any film then this is a likely contender. Beautifully surreal stuff.
Maybe you caught 'Amelie' when it came out to such rave reviews. Maybe you like the last Alien film. Maybe you've seen 'the City of the Lost Children'. If you have then track back to one of Jeunet's first and best films. As with any great foreign language film the subtitles are utterly irrelevant because you don't notive that you're reading them. I would go as far as to say that you could watch this film without subtitles and still be utterly enthralled by it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; 'the Delicatessen' is an experience, and one that you won't forget. So pop into the dusty foreign language section of your local Blockbuster and dig it out. You won't regret it, I promise...
A recurring theme in Jeunet's work is the future. Yet he's one of those people who thinks that it's a rather dystopian place. Yes, we find ourselves in a not so gay Paris. It's post-apocalypse and all the animals are gone. The film doesn't focus on the sad demise of the RSPCA; no it gets down to a real meaty issue - there's no food. Unless that is you're a vegetarian who likes grain. Indeed grain becomes a currency. Of course there are still some out there who need to satisfy their carnal desires. And their tastes are catered for by the butcher Clapet, played by Jean-Claude Drefyus. He stocks his charcuterie with the choicest of morcels, but where is he getting it from? Mais oui, his fellow Frenchmen. In the appartment block in which he lives the families struggle to pay for this most valuable of foodstuffs, fully aware that it comes from the
handymen Clapet employs.
So cannibalism is a prominent image in the film. But it's not serious, indeed the death of the first handyman is actually funny, and that is what we see as the film opens. A man dressed from head to toe in newspapers crawling through the piping to the dustbins, where he hides himself in an empty bin. The waste removal men arrive and just as this handyman is about to make his escape, Clapet lifts up the lid and drops a cigarette in. You hear an "aie!" from
inside the bin and then darkness. Then slowly a lid is lifted, and we see the worried eyes of the handyman staring out from the newspapers. Then the lid is lifted off completely and there stands Clapet, who promptly brings down his cleaver on the camera. The start encapsulates everything you could want to know about the film; it's surreal; it's beautifully shot; it's got you hooked.
This film is populated by the greats of the French movie scene, I am reliably informed, and even if you didn't know who they were then it's pretty obvious that they weren't plucked from obscurity given the strength of their performances. Yet strangely these merge into the background. It's hard to explain but 'the Delicatessen' is more an experience than a film. When you watch it you will be enraptured, mesmerised and enchanted all at once. That still doesn't clarify the films all-encompassing greatness but it comes close.
The film is shot partly in sepia, and partly in normal colour. For those of you who don't know sepia is the browny-gold tint you see in some old photos; it was the stepping stone between black and white and colour. This lends the film a certain beauty, almost nostalgia and this is important to the film. You see, the world which these characters inhabit is not just dilapidated, but sinister. You have the cannibalistic inhabitants of the flat, the psychotic postman, the suicidal Aurore, a mad man in the basement who lives in a festering pit of frogs and snails, Underground are the mole-like vegetarian resistance. This world is so sinister, so macabre that it seems almost incapable of beauty. Yet two characters prove that even in the blackest of situations beauty can flourish. Those moments are shot in the nostalgic sepia, encapsulating the beauty of a past, pre-apocalyptic era.
All the moments of beauty are created by two characters, the Butcher's daughter, Juile, and his new handyman Louison. Louison is a retired clown and brings moments of magic into the dreary life of the appartment block with his tricks and jokes while Julie admires from a distance. In their first meeting she decides that he will not find her attractive if she wears her glasses, so despite being myopic to the point of near blindness she attempts to entertain Louison without them. The camera follows her as she practices everything she will do when she meets him so that she cando the same routine without glasses. However, all goes awry when Louison inadvertently sits in the wrong chair and disrupts her rehearsed actions. It is moments of comic beauty like these that elevate this film above so many others. For a moment you forget the shattered buildings and industrial yellows of the outerworld and become absorbed into the beauty of these sepia-shot scenes.
'The Delicatessen' is first and foremost a love story but place this in a strange, yet fanatastic world and you have one of the most original films made this decade. It's more famous successor, 'the City of the Lost Children' took this blue-print and built on it, but doesn't manage to achieve what 'the Delicatessen' does; an immersive and emotional film of rare and extraordinary beauty. Anyone doubting this should try and see the film's legendary trailer, available on the internet for thsoe with fast connections:
www.movie-list.com/d/delicatessen.shtml
This features the film's most famous scene. The butcher and his girlfriend are on the top floor of the appartment block on a creaky bed doing what birds and bees do. The creaks of the springs create a regular rhythm, which everyone in the block keeps time to. There's a woman beating a mat in time, Julie's metronome clicks in time to the creaks and she plays her cello at that speed, Louison paints a ceiling by rocking backwards and forwards in time to the beat, some toy makers operate their machines in time and a man pumps up his bicycle tire in time as well. The camera cuts between all of them at an ever increasing pace as the rhythm becomes more and more frenetic, until the "climactic moment" when the cello string snaps, the tire explodes, Louison falls off the stool he was perched on and Clapet the butcher lets out a long, loud moan. If you are asked for the best scene in any film then this is a likely contender. Beautifully surreal stuff.
Maybe you caught 'Amelie' when it came out to such rave reviews. Maybe you like the last Alien film. Maybe you've seen 'the City of the Lost Children'. If you have then track back to one of Jeunet's first and best films. As with any great foreign language film the subtitles are utterly irrelevant because you don't notive that you're reading them. I would go as far as to say that you could watch this film without subtitles and still be utterly enthralled by it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; 'the Delicatessen' is an experience, and one that you won't forget. So pop into the dusty foreign language section of your local Blockbuster and dig it out. You won't regret it, I promise...