2025's Delicious is a director's movie if there ever was one. It's modus operandi over substance. It's style over pith. I mean what was that line from a certain 60s biopic from thirty-plus years ago? Ah yes, "you want your creative activity spoon-fed to ya?" Pun so intended.
Anyway Delicious is about cannibalism and bad espousals and taking in total strangers and seeing what human flesh looks like in prime rib form (yikes). The title, well it pretty much says it all for at least the last 15 minutes (give or take). A rich family with the personalities of pet rocks befriend a young, injured woman and let her live in their swank vacation home. Chaos and tension gradually ensue (as they always do).
Starring the likes of Carla Diaz, Valerie Pachner, Sina Martens, and Fahri Yardim and made about two years ago in well-to-do-cultured France, Delicious seems like the art film to be the be-all, end-all of all art films. Um, I'm not sure if that's a good thing mind you. Helmer Nele Mueller Stofen commits to every shot whether it be a rinse, repeat of wide likenesses, longs, and overheads. She seems to be channeling her inner Kubrick and/or Wes Anderson but forgot that story, character development, and a little rapidity matter too.
The diegesis of Delicious, well it literally doesn't unfold until the late part of the third act. And Volker Bertelmann's stirring musical score can only do so much to heighten what little impetus Delicious possesses. The actors give decent performances when they're not pregnant pausing and Provence seems like a darn nice place to visit. But when a pic comes off more as a series of priceless paintings clicked over on a slide show than actual celluloid, it's probably not worth reaching its cinematic Waterloo. Bitter "taste".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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