Pick of the Week: Chocolat

Tagline: "One Taste Is All It Takes."

Chocolat, like the confection alluded to by its title, is delicious, sensual, and -- at times -- the stuff of pure romance. But don’t be confused by the fact that the film’s title is in French. Chocolat is not a remake of the 1988 French movie of the same name, and in fact, it isn’t even a French-language film. This is a delightful, lyrical English-language movie based on the best-selling novel by Joanne Harris.

I’ve always been an easy mark for a voice-over narration. Maybe it goes back to when my mother read aloud to me when I was a child, long ago when my love of getting lost in a story began. So it’s not surprising that one of the things that immediately charmed me was that Chocolat begins with a female voice-over saying, "Once upon a time..." This sets the tone of a grown-up fairy tale.

The feeling throughout this film is one of magic realism mixed with delicious make-believe. But it’s the kind of film where either you buy into the fantasy or you don’t, and I’ll admit up front that I bought into it. Others might not, and that’s understandable. Chocolat takes chances, and what works in this film hangs on the most delicate of threads. This movie might be a little too sweet, politically correct, heavy-handed, or just plain silly for some people’s tastes. But Chocolat caught me in the right mood, both when I originally saw it in a theater and when I saw it again recently on DVD. Each time I watched it, I fell under the spell of the film’s fable-like quality and delightful characters. I was ready and willing to be swept away by something bearing no resemblance whatsoever to real life.

The narration continues "... there was a quiet little village in the French countryside whose people believed in tranquilite. Tranquillity. If you lived in this village, you understood what was expected of you. You knew your place in the scheme of things. And if you happened to forget, someone would help remind you." The suffocation of individuality by a community that demands everyone conform to convention is an idea that runs throughout this film. The small town of Lansquenet is not a particularly happy place. Most of the people there are ripe for a change, even if they don’t quite know it at the beginning of the film.

Next page More About Chocolat Page 1, 2, 3

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