In a world running out of meat, one apartment building has found a reliable source of supply: the tenants upstairs, one at a time, courtesy of the landlord in the butcher shop below.

DELICATESSEN (1991) is set in an unnamed, crumbling future France where grain is currency and protein is scarce. The building's landlord, Clapet, solves the food problem by hiring handymen he has no intention of paying in cash. Each new hire becomes the next meal.

Louison, an ex-circus performer played by Dominique Pinon, takes the job and falls for Clapet's daughter Julie, who is desperate to save him before he ends up on the menu. Meanwhile the building's other tenants, a chorus of oddballs, scheme in the background, some plotting rescue, some just waiting their turn to eat.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro co-directed, working from a script they wrote with Gilles Adrien. The film announced their visual style at once: a jaundiced, sepia-toned world of rust and grime, shot through with slapstick timing worthy of silent comedy. Bodies move like clockwork, gags land with mechanical precision, and horror and comedy share the same frame without apology.

It was Jeunet and Caro's feature debut, made in France on a small budget, and it turned cannibalism into farce without losing its edge of dread.