This movie feels like French surrealism gone wrong, showcasing visual flair but lacking substance. I came to Jean-Pierre Jeunet through “Amelie,” as many people who aren’t deeply familiar with French movies do. That film launched him to international recognition and is widely considered his best and most important work. Because I enjoyed "Amelie" so much, I decided to watch this one, but my experience was quite different. While “Amelie” felt magical and lovely, this movie proved considerably less engaging. The story revolves around a butcher who occasionally sells human meat in a bleak future setting – it’s presented like a bizarre nightmare. Even though I found the film's aesthetics and strange subject matter off-putting, there’s no question that it possesses elements of quality. The decay of buildings and the environment seems to represent or embody a decline in morals and values. The jarring combination of dreamlike imagery and grotesque visuals is deliberate and striking—for instance, when the sounds of a couple making love are mixed with a girl practicing the cello or someone painting their ceiling. You can see the director’s skill here, the same quality we saw in “Amelie,” but it's been twisted and applied to a much less appealing project. The movie has good actors, and each performance helps make it slightly more watchable. Dominique Pinon was particularly noteworthy; he manages to strike a balance between seriousness and humor with remarkable body language and facial expressions. Jean Claude Dreyfus also deserves recognition, while Marie-Laure Dougnac mostly seems to be there to appear otherworldly, like a fleeting illusion. Because the film prioritizes style over substance, it features highly stylized cinematography. I appreciated the camera angles and original filming techniques, though I didn’t care for the color palette, which gave everything an overly brown hue. And despite any attempts at enhancement, the soundtrack is forgettable—it neither improves nor detracts from the movie because it doesn't warrant attention.

Source on TMDB