| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Chocolat (2000) |
| Director | Lasse Hallström |
| Writer | Robert Nelson Jacobs, Joanne Harris (novel) |
| Lead Actor | Juliette Binoche |
| Cast | Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Lena Olin, Alfred Molina |
| Genre | Drama, Romance |
| Release Date | December 15, 2000 (United States) |
| Duration | 2h 1m |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDb Rating | 7.2/10 |
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CHOCOLAT
It’s arguable whether the world needs more chocolate or more self-sacrifice right now. But this dated comic fable about such a conflict, set in 1959 in a French village, floods us predictably in chocolate. It’s predictable because lately movies have not been hot on penitence and self-sacrifice.
Juliette Binoche plays Vianne, a spirit of the times liberated and liberating woman, sort of an anti-gloom, unwed-mom Johnny Appleseed traveling with her young daughter from town to town. She opens a shop and lures the locals with candies laced with if not an outright aphrodisiac a cheerer-upper.
The formula relaxes this fictional town of Lansquenet, which is under the sway of a morose Catholic count and mayor (Alfred Molina) who must have studied religion under Torquemada. (The mayor is the one most desperately in need of chocolate.) He writes the key passages in the stern homilies given by the very green young curate and is about to launch the town on a joyless six weeks of Lenten renunciation.
Vianne doesn’t go to church, and the script (based on the Joanna Harris novel) clearly sets her up as the symbol of modern enlightenment battling tradition and “the way things have always been.” She rescues a battered wife (Lena Olin), reconnects a grumpy dowager (Judi Dench) with her estranged daughter and grandson, and defies custom by welcoming the low-status “river people,” led by romantic Irish gypsy Johnny Depp.
What destroys the film is its smug lack of doubt about its contemporary “enjoy yourself” wisdom, as well as the bad Catholicism it sets up in opposition. (This is a caricature of the pre-conciliar Church.) The effect of chocolate on the hormones joke is pathetically overdone, but the actors (especially Binoche and Olin) carry on with reasonable dignity. Contrived, slow and overrated; not generally recommended.
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