Sweet, sensual delight

Chocolat
With Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Alfred Molina, Johnny Depp and Lena Olin
Directed by Lasse Holstrom
Palace Cinemas, Sydney, other states to follow

REVIEW BY MARGARET ALLUM

I saw Chocolat on Valentine's Day. So too, it seemed, did a good proportion of Sydneysiders. While my timing was merely coincidental, others had decided that this was the romance movie for February 14.

The sea of couples ebbed slightly at the front row, so I positioned myself there for the journey into a tiny French town in the late 1950s, the pleasure of anticipation aided by a complimentary chocolate ball.

Chocolat is a movie less about romance than more about sensual (often forbidden) pleasures. Juliette Binoche stars as an unmarried women with a daughter who arrives in the town and sets up shop to sell fine chocolates. Her wares receive a mixed reception from the townspeople as she sets up in the middle of the Christian season of lent, a period of penitence and self-denial. The town's mayor condemns the new arrival and leads the campaign against the chocolate shop.

Chocolat is about the repressive grip of the church on every part of people's lives. The integration of church and state couldn't more clear: the priest's sermons are edited, and sometimes rewritten, by the mayor.

Gradually though, as expected in this film genre (unconventional outsider arrives in town, is at first ostracised then wins acceptance, leading to the inevitable showdown with the authorities) the irresistible spell of chocolate delicacies proves too hard to resist. The townspeople melt when faced with the friendly ambience of the shop and its proprietor and the delicious hot chocolate that can warm a cold heart.

If you like chocolate, especially hot chocolate, this film will be a visual feast for you. While not an outstanding movie, it is very pleasant, with fantastic performances from Judi Dench as the elderly cantankerous landlady and Lena Olin, a friendless women who is faced with a decision to make about her violent marriage.

Johnny Depp is a little too smooth as an Irish "river gypsy" outsider. Alfred Molina, as the repressed mayor, is well cast. Juliette Binoche is great, but curiously, as the only authentic French actor in the main cast (the others' accents aren't too bad though), she sounds oddly American for some of the movie, and French in other scenes.

Chocolat certainly makes an enjoyable diversion, even without the complimentary chocolate ball.

From GLW issue 438