This is a classic safe-date movie, a charming, inoffensive tale of the transformation of a repressed French town, liberated by the seductive powers of chocolate.James Runcie, whose novel ‘The Discovery of Chocolate’ is published next week, finds ‘Chocolat’ too bland for his tasteJuliette Binoche stars as the mysterious stranger, Vianne Rocher, a chocolatière who sets up shop at the beginning of Lent and antagonises the locals by the implication that they should lighten up a little.
Her chocolate serves as a metaphor for both liberation and temptation, and Vianne soon finds herself up against the local Mayor (a finely judged performance from Alfred Molina ). This is the central tension of the film, and a battle of wits soon develops between the advocates of chocolate and those who wish to preserve the Lenten season as a time of fasting and penitence.
The Mayor (altered from the priest in Joanne Harris’s best-selling novel) is determined to preserve the dignity and repression of a town unchanged in the last 100 years.
He fears that the arrival of chocolate will unleash the forces of licentiousness and excess, and attempts to persuade his people to stop Vianne at all costs.
Fortunately, the lure of the chocolate proves too strong for the Mayor’s conservative zeal and the villagers soon begin to fall under Vianne’s spell - the arid love of a bickering couple is regenerated by a truffle, a battered wife is given the courage to leave her husband, and an elderly man is given the confidence to propose to the woman he has loved all his life - and then, lest we become too accustomed to the locals falling like skittles, Vianne herself is tempted by the charms of free-wheelin’, guitar-playing, riverboat man oux (Johnny Depp).
Chocolat is a good-looking romantic comedy and there are some fine performances, most notably from Lena Olin, who stars as the battered wife of the local publican, and from Judi Dench as a dying diabetic determined to celebrate her final days on Earth.
But it’s Binoche’s movie, and she is incandescent throughout. Playful, flirtatious, generous, and dignified, Binoche can melt chocolate at 100 paces. Although the love affair with Depp is strangely trite, a dramatic fire increases the tension and director Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules) keeps a firm hand on the rhythm of the story as it builds to its romantic and satisfying conclusion.
But despite its charms, there is something tired and familiar about the film. With its setting in a sleepy French town in the 1950s (think Clochemerle); the arrival of a single mother and a strange daughter (think The Piano); and the redemption of a community through culinary skill (think Babette’s Feast), Chocolat is confection of all foodie films that precede it.
There’s an over-riding sense of déjà-vu as the subtleties of Joanne Harris’s beautifully written novel are converted into traditional stereotypes - the drunk barman, the anxious priest, the haughty widow.
The film is not without its charms but it is never quite believable. After all, the premise that a French town is fearful of chocolate and its attendant dangers is clearly preposterous.
Go and see it as escapist, harmless family entertainment, but don’t expect your life to be changed. The film is too bland for that .
Both love, and chocolate, are far richer, and far darker, than this film ever suggests.
Thanks to Mike Kennedy for sending this article which appeared in The Scotsman (UK) on March 1, 2001.