Video Review by Marilyn Robitaille

Last Updated 10/15/01

Email: robitai@our-town.com

Chocolat

I rented Chocolat (that's French for "chocolate," rather than misspelled) without knowing exactly what to expect.  Reviews at the time of its release last year had been mixed, but it was nominated for an array of Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It walked away with Best Original Musical Score, but lost the big prize for Best Picture to Gladiator.  After the week I'd had, I was hoping that the mere sight of chocolate promised by the title would balm my psyche. 

            I was right. This is a whimsical, charming movie that takes you to a far away village where life is simple, and the rules are clear. It's a fable for the cinema that mixes love and intuitive magic with a good dose of capriciousness. When a "sly north wind" blows Vianne (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) into the French village, things are never the same again. They arrive looking like a pair red ridinghoods, enveloped in billowing red cloaks, all their worldly belongings encased in their two simple suitcases they carry with them.

            Within days, Vianne has opened a chocolate shop that pays homage to a 2000 year old chocolate recipe inherited from the Mayans.  Mayan artifacts and talismans decorate the shop and provide clues about the properties of the chocolate, as well as about Vianne's mystical inclinations.  She's pagan; she's intuitive; she's the high priestess of chocolate who can always guess your favorite chocolate delicacy as soon as you walk in the shop. The chocolate's magic ferrets out secrets of the soul?whatever you need, whatever your longings, so long as you submit to the passions of appetite's inner call. Relationships are repaired, solace given, flames of love ignited. The villagers, you'd think, would welcome miracles such as these.  'Tis not the case. The Lenten season is upon them, and they've lived their lives under the watchful, Puritanical shadow of their mayor Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina).  Such pagan pleasures, especially during this season, lure the faithful to certain evils that tempt their mortal souls.  He mounts a campaign to close the shop.

            To complicate matters further, a band of gypsies arrive and set up camp near the river. Always expecting the worst, the Comte calls for a boycott. Shopkeepers refuse to allow them entrance.  Restaurateurs refuse them service. Only Vianne and Anouk embrace them for their difference.  It's not long before Vianne is embracing their leader Roux (Johnny Depp).  With the Comte's mere mention of the need to eradicate the gypsies, Serge (Peter Stormare), his dimwitted social project, expeditiously sets them on fire. Circumstances look a lot like that of Henry II's dealings with his boisterous and deadly knights when a comment rouses them to rush off and murder Beckett in Canterbury Cathedral.  Horrified at the results (as was Henry II), the Comte's rigid, unyielding nature begins to find enlightenment. It's not an easy journey for the Comte, or any of the hardened villagers, but the way is paved with chocolate and the results are always sweet.

Available in DVD and video. Rated PG-13 for a scene of sensuality and some violence.

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