(1991; French) People are starving and drawing straws to see who survives the rampant cannibalism; beans and kernels of corn have become currency. In this foggy, spooky, Darwinian world, the strongest and most ruthless have dominion over the weaklings. The surfacers (carnivores) are at war with the troglodytes (vegetarians), an underground organization who navigate the sewers.

In a ramshackle tenement building, Mr Clapet the butcher (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) has a delicatessen shop on the bottom floor and rents out the flats. His daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) despises him for what he does, luring new tenants into his building to make meat rations, in the manner of Sweeney Todd, for the others, keeping them in his thrall.

Innocently answering a newspaper ad for a maintenance man, Mr Louison (Dominique Pinon) arrives; though the newcomer lacks the bulk the butcher hoped for, he lets Louison have the job and a room. But when the repairs are completed, Louison will become lean cuisine.

Rhythm and humor - bedsprings squeaking in concert with a bicycle pump exhaling, a metronome ticking to a cello's bowing, a carpet being beaten, a paint roller swiping across a ceiling with increasing tempo to climax - accompany director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's otherworldly melody of weird comedy (reminiscent of King of Hearts but more offbeat) punctuated with murderous percussion.

The postman (who lusts for the butcher's daughter) brings a parcel of sweet treats (a precious present for Julie from her father, desiring her favor and forgiveness), which nearly falls into the hands of tenants scrambling after the package as the postman tumbles down the stairwell when a loose step gives way, rescued by the agile Louison, formerly a clown in an act - Stan and Dr Livingstone - with a chimp, since deceased and devoured.

For his selfless act of gallantry, Julie invites the pinch-faced fellow to her room for tea to share the cookies; but in wanting to put on her best face, she removes her glasses, resulting in mishaps. The tea she serves him is a soporific, so that he won't respond to screams at night in the stairwell, while she suffers from surreal nightmares. Together they make music, she on cello and he with a musical saw; he displays skill hurling his Australian blade.

The other roomers include Aurore, unhappily married to Robert (an interlitigator), who hears voices leading her to devise Rube Goldberg methods of unsuccessful suicide; Robert, who lusts after Aurore, and his sneaky business partner; a couple who have a pair of guttersnipe brats and a granny; a man raising frogs and snails inside his wet, slimy room for personal consumption; and the buxom Miss Plusse (Karin Viard), the butcher's mistress.

"Let him go," Julie begs her father, who scoffs at her sentimentality, previously expressed on behalf of the others as well: everyone's hungry. Taking a sample of her father's corn kernels, Julie enters a manhole to contact the Troglogs, inducing them into a pact to kidnap Louison in exchange for more corn.

What appears to be evil is either a result of extenuating circumstances or of ignorance of one's wrongdoing, the gentle-hearted clown says to Julie in a generous apologia for her father's butchery. "Scout to Sauce Master," communicates a Trog back to his command center: "Artichoke heart is in danger."

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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