Rhapsody of the Black Shop
is a 1991 film of noir comedy co-directed by Marc Carroll and Jean Pierre Genet, co-starring Dominic Pinault, Joan Claude, Dreyfus and others.
The film tells the story of Louis, a circus clown who was originally in the pocket of the butchers, but the butcher's daughter fell in love with him and helped him escape the disaster.
In an era that was deliberately ignored, scarce food became a life-saving straw for people to be feared and crazy, or to eat people, or to be eaten, and people began to eat each other. The kind clown Louison (Dominic Pinault) chooses to escape, packing his bags alone and heading to the remote suburbs, where a deli that is recruiting workers becomes the direction in which he settles. He is greeted by the excited eyes of the butcher (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) and his guests, because of the unwritten rule here——— in the absence of hunting targets, the new employees must become the feast table. In a mixture of doubt and curiosity, the unsuspecting clown gets the affection of the butcher's daughter, and this equally lonely and kind girl decides to do whatever it takes to save her lover's life.
"Rhapsody of the Black Shop" is a very different film, which has both the most bloody and crazy cannibal horror and the romantic stroke of French cinema. The film is partly inspired by the real-life experience of Jean-Pierre Genet, whose apartment was once a slaughterhouse, and the sound of the butcher's chopping could be heard at 7 a.m., and Genet's girlfriend often said that the butcher was "slaughtering" his neighbors.
"Rhapsody of the Black Shop" is the directorial debut of Genes and Carlo, who originally planned to shoot "The Night of the Lost Soul", which was too expensive to find investment as a newcomer director.
The film is about a deliberately neglected era, when scarce food becomes a frightening and crazy life-saving straw, or eats people, or is eaten, and people begin to cannibalize. With a dim and ambiguous tone, quirky but cute character shapes, expressionist set props, and a brilliant and unconfluous style, this is a film dominated by fantasy and talent. Dark, grotesque, crazy, funny, and full of fairytale overtones and the spirit of surrealist language.