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Chocolat Customer Reviews (55 - 57 of 72 Reviews)

A Movie You Won't Want To Miss
Roger Ebert really sort of summed it up by saying : "It's the sort of movie you can enjoy as a superior fable, in which the values come from children's fairy tales but adult themes have been introduced."

I'd add to that by saying : It's the type of movie that's perfect for a Sunday afternoon viewing... It doesn't overwhelm you with a lot of fast paced, rich detail that challenges your brain on it's day off from work, but instead just slowly draws you into a sweet story that'll put a smile on your face and a tear in your eye occasionally... Juliette Binoche is REALLY aging well, and a real JOY to watch on screen... and I enjoyed the character portrayals from the other main and supporting characters as well ... Many of the characters you will recognize from other solid character portrayals in other films... Peter Stormare [ Remember the BAD guy : Gaer Grimsrud in 'Fargo', how could you forget him, right? ] and Lena Olin, a favorite of mine, who also appeared in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' with Juliette Binoche, just to name two...

Maybe not 'Best Picture' even though it certainly deserves the nomination, but certainly a good one in a lean year... A movie well worth seeing when you're in a mellow mood... GOOD one!... Don't miss it.

Sweet, delicious fantasy for grown-ups.
A perfect international cast comes together for this wonderful fable that will keep you enrapt for 2 hours. Delightful performances, thoughtfull design and sensitive direction along with a charming score make this one to view more than once.

The Bonus features are less than thrilling and the Producer's commentary is hardly insightful or revealing. It might have been more fun to have some of the cast members offer their recollections and observances than the producers who seemed to be more set on espousing facts from the press release.

Chocolate reforms the church!
This is an American movie directed by Swedish born director Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules, 1999; Something to Talk About, 1995), set in France with a distinct French flavor. The cast, headed by the very talented Juliette Binoche as Vianne Rocher, a wandering proprietress of chocolate, is highly accomplished and very much worth watching. Judi Dench has a substantial role as the cranky Armande, and Johnny Depp makes a belated appearance as Binoche's love interest, Roux, the River Rat. Alfred Molina plays the small town's semi-fascist Catholic mayor, Comte Paul de Reynaud. With his slicked-back, straight black hair and the precise black mustache and his imposing countenance, one is somehow reminded of Count Dracula. Leslie Caron (An American in Paris, 1951; The L-Shaped Room, 1963), now in her seventies, has a small part as the widow Madame Audel. Carrie Anne-Moss of Matrix fame (but I recall her most memorably in Memento, 2000) plays Armande's strait-laced and estranged daughter. Noteworthy is the captivating Victoire Thivisol as Anouk Rocher, Vianne's nine-year-old daughter. Thivisol won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 for her work as a four-year-old (!) in Ponette (1996). She is surely the youngest actor ever to win such an award.

Chocolat is also a kind of modern Dionysian morality tale in reverse with the Catholic church and small town narrow-mindedness as the bad guys. It gets more than a bit sappy at times, and the unrelenting celebration of outsiders and non-conformists is wearisome and sorely tried my patience throughout. However, just as is the case with chocolate with its uplifting qualities amidst the lure to overindulgence, the good surely outweighs the bad. Hallstrom is an ambitious director who is comfortable playing to an adult feminist audience. He attempts the complex and the unlikely. Here, there is more than the usual Hollywood seduction of the intended audience. There is underneath the surface a strong symbolic presence, giving the story a kind of resonating, fairy tale existence.

Chocolate of course serves as the Dionysian wine, but it is also a semi-addictive substance from a tropical American plant, the cacao, rich in sumptuous oils and theobromine, a heart and general nervous system stimulant similar to caffeine. Cocoa was the first stimulant drink to break the unrelenting hold of beer and wine on the European palate. It was quickly followed by coffee and tea. Prior to the rise of these cerebral drinks, it was commonplace for Europeans to drink beer for breakfast, and indeed to drink beer and wine throughout the day. Many believe that caffeine was a handmaiden of the Renaissance, which of course led to the eventual weakening of the hold of the Roman Catholic church. Vianne, who is the daughter of a central American mother and a European father, represents the shamanism of the New World, leading the populace away from the narrow confines of the medieval mentality with her irresistible confections made with the seed of Theoboma cacao.

The problem with the movie, and the reason it did not achieve a more wide-spread acclaim, lay not only with its cloyingly unbalanced feminist viewpoint and its anti-Catholicism, but with the difficulty Binoche (and Hallstrom) had with her complex role. Her character is a woman who wants desperately to find a place in society and to be accepted by the petite bourgeoisie while maintaining her personal sense of value (and her red shoes!). She is, in a sense, a gypsy fortune teller (recall the spinning plates) who longs to be a pillar of the community. She is worldly wise, kind and forgiving, but partly a shopkeeper with a shopkeeper's need to set down roots. She is also a Mayan princess born to wander with the sly wind that ushers her about. So, underneath all else, this is a story about finding a home. Because Vianne is frequently attacked for her lifestyle while being the sort of person who does not return insult with insult, Binoche is reduced in many scenes to a kind of tolerant, slightly superior, patient smile that becomes wearying. It is only when Johnny Depp appears that we see the real Juliette Binoche and a true indication of her ability. Incidentally Depp is excellent as a gypsy musician who understands himself and his place as a counter balance to a conservative society. He is an inspiration to Vianne because he alone is not transparent to her; she only discovers his "favorite" chocolate by happenstance after two wrong guesses. Depp also serves to save this film from the near monotony of inadequate males and dissatisfied females. When he appears I can almost hear the audience sigh.

Incidentally, you might want to compare this to Babette's Feast (1987) in which the narrow-minded and in need of liberation are northern Protestants, while the woman with the tempting goodies is an exiled Catholic chef from France. If Hallstrom had taken a clue from Gabriel Axel, who directed Babette's Feast, and followed a more objective and balanced treatment, Chocolat might have been a great movie. As it is, it is a very interesting one, and one you're not likely to forget or to feel neutral about.

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