Review: Better Than Chocolate
Directed by Anne Wheeler
Written by Peggy Thompson
Starring Karyn Dwyer, Christina Cox,
Wendy Crewson, Peter Outerbridge
`Better Than Chocolate' is a sweet and sexy comedy; sparkling dialogue and a range of delightful characters highlight this Canadian independent. Plus, it includes a finger-painting scene that makes the potter's wheel scene in `Ghost' look as tame as a church social.
Set in the Vancouver, BC lesbian community, it's your basic girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girl gets girl story. Maggie's (Karyn Dwyer) life suddenly becomes very complicated when her mother (Crewson) telephones to announce she's getting a divorce and needs to come stay with her. Maggie has yet to tell her mother that she's dropped out of University, is a lesbian, and is currently living in the back of the bookshop where she works. She finds a loft to sublet in the nick of time, but she also finds herself involved with Kim (Cox), a free spirited, nomadic artist. When the van Kim lives in is towed away and impounded (with both women inside--passion will not wait), Kim moves in with her.
The straight mother is hilariously oblivious. She thinks Ten Percent Books, the name of the bookstore where her daughter works, means it's a discount shop. Maggie makes a last minute search of the loft, owned by a safe-sex activist, frantically hiding dildoes; a sweep that is of course not one hundred percent effective. No more successful is Maggie and Kim's attempt to make love quietly in the large but necessarily open living space they're sharing with her mother and teenage brother. Kim, who makes no secret of her sexual orientation, finds Maggie's desperate efforts to conceal hers ridiculous. Then irritating and offensive. Finally, it leads to a break between the two.
Meanwhile, the bookstore is under siege by Customs, who has been seizing its shipments of books as pornographic, as well as by local skinheads, whose methods are more direct and a good deal more dangerous. Frances, the beleaguered shop owner, is wound as tight as a violin string. This spells bad news for Judy, the transvestite man who's in love with her. All of these story threads are woven neatly together into one fast-paced plot.
Although the threats to this tightly knit community are very real, the film never becomes sanctimonious and even enjoys a bit of self-mockery. Maggie, though she's in the process of liberating herself, becomes acutely uncomfortable when her mother talks about her own sex life (or rather lack of one). Judy is attacked by a lesbian for using the women's restroom instead of the men's, proving no one has a monopoly on intolerance.
On the whole, though, the tone is kept light. Gradually, everyone either finds, or is restored to, her proper partner. There's a sense that if love may not conquer all, it certainly makes everything easier to cope with. This makes the ending a bit facile. But, hey, this is a comedy after all.
`Better Than Chocolate' is better than most.
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