Yar, you be here: Chocolat > Customer Reviews

Chocolat Customer Reviews (52 - 54 of 72 Reviews)

A great emotional lift.
Lasse Hallstrom's film version of the Joanne Harris' novel Chocolat is as delightful a confection as were the heroines' chocolate creations themselves. The plot is intricate and intriguing, carrying the viewer through the emotional transformations of each of the main characters. In a sleepy medieval French town where life has assumed a repressive structure that has created an emotionally frozen and empty life for even the most highly placed members of its society, the heroine Vianne and her daughter arrive to set up a chocolate shop. With her wonderfully concocted sweets she manages to liberate some of the denizens of the town, revealing their potential for greater happiness. The story has a sense of myth, fantasy, and fairytale about it that leaves the viewer with a feeling of personal satisfaction.

This is a film full of strong female performers. Judi Dench is especially wonderful as a curmudgeonly elderly woman estranged from her daughter and forbidden to see her grandson. Juliette Binoche does a fine job as the heroine. She is as fragile and seductive as Monroe in some scenes and as forceful and independent as Bacall in others. Lena Olin is wonderful as the abused wife who rises from the confusion and ashes of her own ruined personality like a phoenix under the influence of the heroine.

This is one of the best movies I've seen in a ling while, and I expect to order and read the book upon which it was based--something I rarely do.

A sweet film, no pun intended (wink!) haha I'm so funny from
Japan, hahahahahahah I crack myself up, i';m so FREAKIN' witty, i thinl i'm a real reviewer, i spend all my time leaving stupid reviews woo hooo I'm the fujiyama mama

RICHLY SEDUCTIVE
Juliette Binoche does not do much with which I can find fault. She is beautiful, talented, unconventional and luminous in this role of a wandering woman and her daughter who open a chocolate shop in a small, conservative French town just as Lent begins. Binoche slowly wins over the townspeople with her delicious concoctions, but the mayor (Alfred Molina) is unmoved, as is a severe women who works with him (Carrie Anne Moss, virtually unrecognisable from her role as Trinity in The Matrix). Binoche's daughter is charmingly portrayed by young actress Victoire Thivisol, who was first seen as a tiny child in the engaging and sad French film Ponette. Binoche's love interest is played by Johnny Depp, who is summarily shunned by the town. Other fascinating roles, the always superb Judi Dench as the woman who rents the shop to Binoche (and as Moss's estranged mother. Moss will not allow Dench to see her grandson, but Binoche conspires to allow grandmother and grandson to see one another secretly at her shop). Also important here are the roles of the abused wife, Lena Olin (real-life wife of director Lasse Hallstrom) and her husband, played well by Peter Stormare (whom you may remember best as the accomplice to the crime in Fargo. He was the blond one who stuffs Steve Buscemi's body into the wood chipper). Overall this is a beautiful film, and while it basically has a happy ending, it is still worthwhile and wonderful.

Previous Page

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Next Page