Summary:
A single mother opens a chocolate shop in a conservative village in France, challenging the morals of the town.
My Thoughts:
“For the record: I saw “Chocolat.” Its just delightful.” – Jason Segel,“I Love You, Man”
Whenever I think of Lasse Hallstrom’s “Chocolat,” my mind immediately jumps to the final scene in “I Love You, Man” when Jason Segel declares to Paul Rudd that he went out of the way to watch this film, and that he really enjoyed it. I love that scene; I love that move. While “Chocolat” might get a bad rap from the average cinephile, it was pretty heavily acclaimed upon release (it was nominated for five Oscars, including Actress (Binoche), Supporting Actress (Dench), Adapted Screenplay, Score, and Best Picture). This is a feel-good film, and a lot of cinephiles (myself included) tend to gravitate towards the doom and gloom harbingers of the film world (Bergman, Tarkovsky). Films by directors like Bergman (“Persona”) and Tarkovsky (“Ivan’s Childhood”) often use horrible tragedies to tell stories that cut to our very soul and challenge our very ways of life, while Lasse Hallstrom’s “Chocolat” uses simple everyday kindness, subtle metaphors, and yes, chocolate to challenge our biases.
The things that I love about “Chocolat”- the sparkle of magical realism, the richness in details of the sets and locations, the fable-like tone of the story itself- will not appeal to all viewers, and that’s fine. I think the average moviegoer will probably agree with me that this is a solid 4/5 Star film; it’s a well-told story with marvelous performances and a fantastical world, but that’s not to say there aren’t issues. The average cinephile could easily pick apart the editing problems, the minor pacing issues in the second act, and the flat (sometimes boring) cinematography to give this a 3.5/5 Star film (if you’re cynical you could probably even go as low as 3/5). For me, the joyous feeling I get when watching “Chocolat” is better than the feeling I get from many 5 Star films, so giving it a 4/5 Star rating was no problem for me. This was not my first time seeing this film, and even on my rewatch, I found myself drawn, almost spellbound, into this world.
I laughed, and yes, I cried, and I’d be more than happy to visit this little village and do it all again.
“Once upon a time, there was a quiet little village in the French countryside…”
Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche, “Summer Hours”, “Clouds of Sils Maria”) and her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol, “Ponette”) move to a small village in France where everyone obeys strict morality rules set in place by the mayor, Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina, “Vice”). As Vianne’s single motherhood offends Comte de Reynaud, he begins a sort of morality war against Vianne, and soon the whole town finds themselves split between the chocolaterie and the mayor. Among those whose lives are affected are an aging woman named Armande (Judi Dench, “Skyfall”), Armande’s daughter Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss, “The Matrix”), a troubled woman named Josephine (Lena Olin, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”) and her husband Serge (Peter Stormare, “Fargo”), the new young priest Father Henri (Hugh O’Conor, “My Left Foot”), and a gypsy named Roux (Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”).
The tone of this film is what sells the whole movie for me, and the opening line sets that tone in a simply magical fashion. “Once upon a time, there was a little village in the French countryside, whose people believed in tranquilite- tranquility.” One of the first shots shows a mother and daughter, trekking across a windswept and barren field, shrouded in cowls of red. Immediately my mind jumped to Red Riding Hood and the brothers Grimm, and that’s no accident. The way this film infuses subtle hints of magic is probably my favorite part of the movie. As a huge fan of fairy tales and fantasy books, I’ve come to love when films use the storybook framing device and can pull it off. There are plenty of films that try to replicate the storybook approach and fail spectacularly (the most recent adaptation of “Robin Hood”), but when a film can nail that tone of magical realism, it adds a fantastical element to the film that immediately hooks me. This is one of the better magical realism films I’ve seen on screen; there is never any onscreen magic or anything that might push this film into actually being a fantasy film, but there is plenty of magic infused through the beautiful settings, the colorful characters, and the childlike wonder that the whole story is told with.
A lot of the magic in this film comes from Juliette Binoche’s absolutely wonderful performance as Vianne. Vianne herself is pretty much a flawless character. A lot of times, I would criticize a character like hers for being one note, but for this movie particularly, I feel like her perfection fits the fable/ fairy tale element of the story. This movie is meant to teach us to accept people for who they are, regardless of their beliefs or what sins we think they might have committed. Vianne’s perfection as a character is warranted because she needs to have the moral high ground throughout the story in order for the lesson to make sense at the end. Yes, usually perfect characters are boring, but this film pulls it off by having Vianne’s tiffs with Comte de Reynaud be grounded in petty and trivial things. Vianne herself has done nothing to harm anyone, and the Comte’s intention to destroy Vianne’s shop seems more driven by his own selfish desire to remove temptation than actually “Boycotting Immorality”. This movie transcends itself and becomes more than about a chocolatier fighting against an oppressive and controlling mayor; it becomes a fable trying to push people towards accepting those who they might’ve discriminated against simply because they don’t understand their way of life. Yes, Vianne is a pretty flawless character, but that flawlessness is used almost didactically, to teach the viewer something, and that works harmoniously with the story in the long run.
My biggest qualms with this film are the cinematography and editing. This film has beautiful sets and locations; it looks like so much work went into the production design, but the cinematography barely displays any of it. Why set your fantastical story in a fairytale-esque village if we’re only going to see it in brief glimpses? I would say probably 60% of the shots in this movie are boring medium shots or two shots. There were so many missed opportunities to show how characters felt in certain scenes by just adjusting the camera a little bit. Simultaneously, there were quite a few awkward edits, moments that, if a half a second here or there had been trimmed, it would’ve helped with the flow of the film. I work as an editor for a TV station; I’m in the editing booth every day. I know that the difference between an awkward pause in a conversation and what seems to be a naturally flowing conversation can alter with a few heartbeats. There are enough awkward edit moments for me to make note of it; usually one character will say or do something and then stand there for an extra second not doing anything. Some scenes were fine, but the miss-edits happened enough to slightly distract me.
Verdict:
I can always tell I’ve watched a good movie when I wake up thinking about it the next day, and this morning as I sat down to write my review for “Chocolat” I grew excited. The infectiously happy attitude of “Chocolat” stayed with me overnight and left me in a good mood this morning. This review certainly wont be my most read review on this site, but if one person who reads this review and watches “Chocolat” and gets a taste of the same joy I do from watching this movie, then it will all be worth it. “Chocolat” may not be for everyone (it might be too sugary-sweet for your taste buds), but I personally find it to be, in the immortal words of Jason Segel, “just delightful.”
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