 I am addicted to chocolate. To
avoid having cravings I stayed away from this little excursion into 1950-60's
France.
Part of me also felt
that this would be a full blown chick-flick. It is, and on the order of Thelma
and Louise, and something even gets blowed up.
This film is superior
to T&L, and there is nothing wrong with CF's in general, but they have a
particularly strange way of looking at things.
Like T&L, Chocolat
has one theme that stands out - "The right of a woman to choose her own
death".
T&L drove off a
cliff to escape the "man". In Chocolat, Judy Dench is an elderly
woman who refuses to follow a strict or even healthy diet, and literally eats
herself to death. She is seen as heroic for dying "her
way".
Sorry, but it seems a
little sick to me that women extol the virtues of death over life, for the sake
of "rightness". I think I'd rather be wrong and alive than dead and
right.
Back to the
feature.
When a chill little
North wind blows into a tight-ass French town perched high above a river
(seemingly untouched by the relatively recent WWII, the lives of the local
residents are changed forever. On the heels of this intrusive gust are a mother
and child. Renting space from the aforementioned Dench, they proceed to stir up
trouble in the form of milky chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, chocolate
hearts, chocolate love pills, etc. etc.
Spin the wheel and it
will reveal your most chocolaty passion. Part mystic, part fortune-teller, part
Oprah, this new-chocolat-age prophet sets about changing the hearts of this
devoutly catholic and rigidly moralistic town.
Mr. Mayor is sullen
and dark and trying to undo them from the start. The plot sort of revolves
around whether the stick will ever get pulled out of this guy's ass or not.
(Would take about a week.)
Complications arise
when a victim of domestic abuse seeks shelter in the Chocolatierry, and then
again when the South wind blows up some skirts and drops Johnny Depp in the
cradle of chocolatization.
This is probably all
some kind of metaphor for life, but there was a lot of chocolat in this little
store. I cannot imagine where everything came from, and it went together kind
of quick, for her just having moved in and all.
Anyway, there is a lot
of struggling, it is played pretty well, and I can recommend it, except if you
are a women you might get the idea that death is preferable to not getting your
own way...
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Obligatories and Cliches in
Chocolat
This is a sweet little film, but hardly
best picture fodder. It looks and feels like one of the classic Truffaut films,
or another European slice-of-life period piece. Better if seen with
someone.
1. Free-spirited women
charting their own destiny no matter what men say. (Why do they even care what
men say? Why is it an issue at all?)
2. Evil
churchmen
3. River rabble who
can play musical instruments like no body's business.
4. Magic sex elixir
that saves a couple's marriage.
5. Twitchy old
woman
6. reclusive
child
7. Domineering
overprotective mother
8. Hot sex between
south and north wind.
9. Redecorating the
chocolat shop ritual
10. Townspeople being
won over
11. Old people in
love
12. Cute
dog
13. Young girl who
saves the day by dropping granma's ashes all over everything, but instead of
declaring her independence and in your face right to strew granma, she actually
apologizes and kowtows to what Mama wants. (Gee, she is being considerate of
another's feelings and THAT has no place in the modern women's
lexicon.)
14. Tight ass city
official with aforementioned stick.
15. Obligatory
domestic violence scene.
16. Obligatory
scarfing chocolat binge scene.
17. Obligatory
stranger knows better than kid's own mother scene , except about her
kid.
18. Obligatory
scraggly bearded cute independent male-in-the-wind will he come back or won't
he character that is just a subplot with no real definition or reason for being
except he is another level of bohemian that the townspeople cannot abide so why
is he even there except as a male clone of the female star.
19. Obligatory voice
over like in Road Warrior.
20. Obligatory man
can't live without a woman but woman can live without a man scenario. What the
hell ever happened to partnershipping and togetherness instead of all of this
crappy one-upsmanship and ups-womanship?
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