{"id":461,"date":"2006-04-03T07:18:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-03T07:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2006\/04\/delicatessen\/"},"modified":"2006-04-03T07:18:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-03T07:18:00","slug":"delicatessen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2006\/04\/delicatessen\/","title":{"rendered":"Delicatessen"},"content":{"rendered":"<table>\n<tr>\n<td><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?t=funk02-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=B0000634BZ&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/td>\n<td>I saw the 1991 film <i>Delicatessen<\/i> again at the weekend. This beautifully shot, charming French film is set in a retro, post-apocalyptic world, with food so scarce that the glowering butcher\/landlord regularly hires handymen in order to dispatch and serve them to his tenants. <\/p>\n<p>Underneath the pavements in the dripping sewers, oil-skinned troglodytes lead a subterranean vegetarian resistance existence and eschew the meat-eating cannibalism of the city dwellers above.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p> The clown (whose partner the chimp Livingstone has been eaten) becomes the focus for  the amorous intentions of the short-sighted butcher&#8217;s daughter, and the intricately interwoven plot, with a sub-plot for every tenant, revolves around the flowering of love in this precarious environment.<\/p>\n<p>I love this darkly disturbing, comic film, but the experience of watching it again was very painful. It was a great surprise to me that my mood plummeted despite enjoying every scene, and I found myself actually depressed when <i>GGF<\/i> (who eats a healthy balanced diet with occasional tendencies towards sweets) asked for a second helping of ice-cream.<\/p>\n<p>The subject of food, and a combination of memories associated with the film and current concerns about the health of a dear friend took me back to 1991. It reminded me too much of a time when I lived with a <a HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bulimia\" target=_blank>bulimic<\/a> and food was fraught with danger. Bulimia nervosa is like an addiction, except that, unlike heroin or cocaine or valium, you NEED food to live, and so you must continue to eat. <\/p>\n<p>This was a love relationship of the most profound kind, and even though we have been apart for seven years, although I do not want to admit it, I am still recovering. To survive, I suppressed what pain it was to live with a compulsive-obsessive. Remaining intellectually aware of the fact, the awful emotional turbulence of that time and the personal damage it cause me has been lurking in my own underground passages all this time. So I abandoned the film, and begged my girlfriend not to eat ice-cream, in a way I never did fifteen years previously. The daily fear that the messy situation would turn to tragedy &#8211; suicide a very real possibility, and an estimated 10% death rate &#8211; actually wounded me far more deeply than I realised, and it has taken me fifteen years to acknowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Later the next day, we resumed the DVD and watched it to the end. I do not remember having such an extreme reaction to any film; how bizarre, I reflected next day, that I can watch horror and sleep like a baby, but this delightful comedy should plunge me into a personal abyss.<\/p>\n<p><font SIZE=1><a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/French film\" rel=\"tag\">French film<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Delicatessen\" rel=\"tag\">Delicatessen<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/bulimia\" rel=\"tag\">bulimia<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/eating disorder\" rel=\"tag\">eating disorder<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I saw the 1991 film Delicatessen again at the weekend. This beautifully shot, charming French film is set in a retro, post-apocalyptic world, with food so scarce that the glowering butcher\/landlord regularly hires handymen in order to dispatch and serve them to his tenants. Underneath the pavements in the dripping sewers, oil-skinned troglodytes lead a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[780],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funky-original","tag-funky-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}