Chocolat Review
by Tim Wick
Try as I might, I can't deny I went into Chocolat with negative baggage.
You see, I'm a little tired of Miramax getting their less than worthy films
nominated for best picture on the strenght of powerful publicity campaigns.
They did it for the worthy Shakespeare in Love and the film ended up
beating the vastly superior Saving Private Ryan as a result. Last year,
they did it for The Cider House Rules - a basic and undeserving film that
replaced far better work. This year, their banner film was Chocolat.
I was ready to be enraged once again that far worthier films were beat out
by
a publicity campaign.
Well, Chocolat is not one of the best five films of the year. I'm not
enraged, however, because it is actually quite enjoyable.
I think it is worthy of note that three out of four films nominated for Best
Picture this year (Erin Brockovich, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and
Chocolat) are pictures that center on female characters. This is
altogether unusual in the modern age of male dominated filmmaking and I hope
it is the harbinger of more.
Chocolat is not original. It is derivative of many other "transformation"
films where a quirky outsider shows up to shake things up a bit. There was
nary a plot device that was new to me and the majority of the plot points
were easily divined long before they came to pass. I am not criticizing
this, merely pointing it out.
Like our favorite blanket or our favorite piece of music or even our
favorite
movie, familiarity is comforting. That we know where Chocolat is going
means that we can simply sit back and enjoy the ride. We are not forced to
engage emotionally on anything more than a superficial lever. We need films
like this because we can only watch so many emotinally draining films.
Chocolat is a comforting film. It is a fable about the healing power of
chocolate (something we can all relate to). We are introduced to a town
that is unaware of it's own closed mindedness until someone who contradicts
everything they believe in shows up and teaches them a better way. Of
course
they resist. When one has lived under a particular set of rules for so
long,
it is hard to see that those rules are not the best ones.
Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) is Vianne Roucher, the fly in our
little town's ointment. She does not attend church (a woman after my own
heart), has a child out of wedlock and - horror of horrors - she opens a
chocolate shop at the beginning of lent.
The villagers are incenced. Their mayor, the Comte de Raynaud (Alfred
Molina), is morally outraged and embarks on a crusade to show them all how
wrong she is.
Things only get worse when a band of river dwellers decide to make camp next
to the village. Of course, Vianne is kind to them while the rest of the
village will not do business with them at all. We know they are not theives
and we know Vianne will eventually be proven right.
Added to the mix are a compelling band of secondary characters including a
love-struck old man (John Wood), a battered housewife (Lena Olin), a bitter
matron (The always impressive Judi Dench) and her estranged daughter (an
almost unrecognizable Carrie-Anne Moss). Like stock characters in a
commedia
del arte performance, we recognize these characters and know everything
about
them alsmost at once.
That the movie manages to be enjoyable despite its overwhealming number of
cliches is the fault of a fine script by Robert Nelson Jacobs. The film is
kept light and tasty, like the confections in Binoche's shop. Ultimately
this
movie is a comedy but the comedy is a natural outgrowth of the characters.
This is a difficult effect to achieve but Jacobs did it well.
Did Chocolat deserve all the oscar nominations it received? I don't
really
believe so. Wonder Boys, Nurse Betty, The Gift and Cast Away were
all better movies. That said, this movie is still far above most other
films you are likely to see and since it has been nominated for an Oscar, it
has become much easier to find. As the title implies, it is a sweet distr
action.
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