Chocolat (2000)
Directed by Lasse Hallström

Film Review

For all its sugary charm, attractive cast and glossy production values, Chocolat somehow fails to live up to its promise, and it is really little more than a half-hearted attempt to give a second rate novel by Joanne Harris the full art house treatment.  The film's seductive charms are mostly superficial (take away the photography and sugarsweet performances and there's not much left), and even these are undermined by a hopelessly contrived plot which switches awkwardly between social realism, romance, melodrama and comic fantasy.  Chocolat is too saccharine, too light weight and too multi-flavoured for its own good.

Hollywood perennial Johnny Depp looks like a rather obvious production imposition.  Great actor though he is, he looks uncomfortably out of place in this lightweight drama, and his attempt at an Irish accent does not help with the credibility of his performance (the same goes for all of the other phoney accents offered up by the rest of the cast). Depp's on-screen rapport with Juliette Binoche (equally miscast) is negligible, although given the quality of the dialogue this is probably not a surprise. Thank Heavens for Judy Dench - as a crotchety old woman with a taste for chocolate she at least justifies his presence in the film with a convincing character portrayal, and it's a shame that she doesn't play a greater part in the proceedings. On the other hand, Victoire Thivisol (the child star of Jacques Doillon's Ponnette) fails to shine, thanks largely to the crass idiot child dialogue she is lumbered with.  The only actor who is well-served by the film and gives it one hundred per cent is Alfred Molina - his solid portrayal of a bigoted aristocrat manages to be convincing, comical and, ultimately, rather poignant.

For all its faults, Chocolatis a sufficiently unusual work that it manages to maintain the spectator's interest, having something of the dark seductive appeal of an over-priced box of snob confectionary.  Unfortunately, its artistic sheen starts to wear thin way before the film ends, and whilst it may be a tasty morsel, it fails to be an entirely satisfying indulgence.  You expect Godiva, but what you get is Milk Tray.

Film Synopsis

The tranquillity of a small French village is disturbed by the arrival of a strange young woman, Vianne Rocher, and her illegitimate daughter, Anouk.  To the horror of the Count de Reynard, the town's ultra-conservative, ultra-Catholic mayor, Vianne opens a chocolate shop and starts to entice the townsfolk with her spicy chocolate nipples - and this at the start of Lent.  Vianne's reputation as a bad influence is furthered when she shows sympathy for a group of river gypsies, led by an Irish musician named Roux.  Despite the best efforts of the Count, Vianne's business thrives, and she helps to transform the lives of a battered housewife and an estranged elderly grandmother.  When the Count's crusade to drive her out of town gets personal, Vianne decides it is perhaps time to move on...