Merry Christmas, everone! CHOCOLAT
Comedy/Fable
Like its heroine Viane (Juliette Binoche), a drifter who pulls up roots and relocates more often than Hillary Clinton, Lasse Hallstrom's Chocolat is a hard movie to pin down. There's an undeniable sweetness to this fable of the redemptive power of pleasure, but there's a troubling lack of inspiration as well. It aspires to the territory of the great food movies like Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, but it lands somewhere closer to the packaged entree blandness of this year's Woman on Top.
We are introduced to an enchanting little French river village and informed by a voice over that "if you lived in this village, you knew your place in the scheme of things, and if you forgot, someone reminded you." As likely as not, that someone would be the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), the town's petty nobleman, mayor, and moral policeman.
But one day a bizarre north wind kicks up, and on its blustery gusts two red-hooded figures blow into town. They are Viane and her little daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol, remembered from Ponette), and they immediately rent an empty patisserie which Viane sets about turning into a chocolaterie. As luck and timing would have it, the opening of the house of confection coincides with the beginning of Lent. This, combined with the newcomer's refusal to attend the village church, where Reynaud monitors and takes attendance, quickly chills the locals' welcome.
The theme of Chocolat, which is adapted from a popular novel by Joanne Harris, is that goodness is not measured by self-denial, but by openness and charitable love. The Catholic Church takes a good measure of the flat end of the stick here as the instrument of repression. To be sure, the young priest (Hugh O'Conor of The Young Poisoner's Handbook) is a tender-hearted, rock 'n' roll-loving softie, but he is putty in the hands of the overbearing Count, and the church he serves does enforce Lent, and Viane's refusal to attend it has nothing to do with the Count's authoritarianism.
Bit by bit, or bite by bite, the populace succumbs to the temptations of Viane's chocolate delicacies, and of her understanding nature. Long-dormant sexual passions are reawakened, flinty old grumps are softened, timid lovers are emboldened, the oppressed cease from distressing and take control of their own lives. And there is a wonderful caliber of actors to do all this. Dame Judi Dench, Lena Olin, John Wood, Leslie Caron, Peter Stormare, and Carrie-Ann Moss all bring their great talents to the telling of this fable.
But there are no surprises. Nobody does anything you couldn't predict from the first moment he or she is introduced. This creates the problem of a flatness of character. There is a certain charm, for instance, to the geriatric romance between the shy John Wood and the widow Leslie Caron still mourning her husband forty years after his death in WWI, but there is no real humanity to it.
The case can be made that this is a fairy tale, after all, and fairy tales live on a menu of atmosphere and satisfaction, not surprise. Viane and her daughter arrive cloaked like mother-daughter Little Red Riding Hoods, wafted on a wind of magical realism, and they set about concocting a magic potion to awaken the villagers trapped in a cheerless spell. For some viewers that potion will work, that spell will be broken. Others will be unconvinced.
If it has taken a long time in this review to get to Johnny Depp, well, it takes a long time in the movie too. He turns up midway through as a "river rat", an Irish gypsy who drifts from town to town with the river's current. He's a welcome addition, but truth to tell, he never gets much to do other than fix a door, play a guitar, provide a kindred outcast spirit to go with Viane's, and look meltingly handsome. Still, there aren't many actors who can put what he does into a line like "I'll come around some time and get that squeak out of your door."
Juliette Binoche never gets comfortable in her role. Lena Olin does better as an abused wife who finds sanctuary in the chocolate shop. The performance that makes the biggest impact belongs to Alfred Molina, who takes the role of ogre and seeds it with flakes of humanity that promise an ultimate redemption.
Chocolat keeps veering between fulfillment and disappointment. There are wonderful scenes, adorable characters, funny bits, moments of real magic and magic realism. But it never quite finds itself, and the blame has to fall to director Hallstrom, just as much of the credit for last year's The Cider House Rules belongs to him. He can't quite figure it out. There is a favorite bedtime story that little Anouk pries from her reluctant mother, about her grandmE8re and grandp=E8re. As Viane = tells the story we go to a flashback of their romance that includes an unaccountable sex scene. As sex scenes go these days, it's pretty modest, but there's no reason for it in this movie. It's an indication of Hallstrom's lack of mastery of this material.
Don't misunderstand - there is an audience for this movie, some people will love it, and even the grinchiest critic can hardly hate it. But the magic wand Lasse Hallstrom tries to wave in this broad-stroked fairy tale sometimes feels more like a cattle prod.
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