The instrument of the town's transformation comes in the form of a free-spirited woman named Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche). The storyteller soon introduces her character by saying, "One winter day, a sly wind blew in from the north." Wearing bright-red hooded cloaks, Vianne and her small daughter arrive in this beguilingly picturesque, quiet French village. The mother-daughter pair looks innocuous enough, but their presence will eventually melt the town's cool tranquillity, changing lives forever. The vibrant red color of their cloaks against the cold silver grays of a winter landscape is a particularly cinematic touch. Visually, the handwriting is on the wall: they are already the only spot of light and life in an oppressively cold, dreary place.
Vianne, whose mother was a Maya Indian from Central America, is a very unconventional woman. She soon creates a scandal by opening a chocolate shop during Lent, a time when the town's residents are expected to deny themselves treats and snacks. When the Comte de Reynaud, the town's pious, aristocratic mayor (nicely played as a comic villain by Alfred Molina), drops by to welcome Vianne and her daughter to Lansquenet, she tells him that they don't attend church and that she has never been married. From the look of shock and consternation in Reynaud's eyes, there's little doubt that the battle lines in his "holy war between chateau and chocolaterie" are being drawn in his mind. Reynaud dictates the mores of this town more than most ordinary mayors would, often offering suggestions on revisions to the priest's Sunday sermon that turn out to be something closer to rewrites. Watching Reynaud in action, one senses his desire to control the people of the town stems from something more than a kindly paternalistic interest in their well-being. It's as if he's trying to keep some secret personal horror safe.
When Vianne's Chocolaterie Maya opens, many of the locals are further irritated by its paganistic motif. Upon first seeing the new shop, Vianne's landlady Armande Voizin (Judi Dench) asks, "What's the decor -- Early Mexican Brothel?" But Vianne manages to win her over with a cup of chocolate, and the two women open up to each other. We soon learn that Armande is forbidden to see her grandson Luc (Aurelien Parent-Koenig), ostensibly because the boy's mother Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss) believes Armande is a bad influence. But Armande thinks the real reason is that Caroline finds her own mother to be an embarrassment who obstinately refuses to slink away to a home for the aged.
Lent still has weeks to go, but a few of the more desperate villagers sample Vianne's delicious chocolate concoctions, which often contain a small amount of chili pepper, and find their dull, calm, colorless lives transformed for the better. Of course, this wreaks havoc with the comfortable, conformist status quo and provokes the wrath of Reynaud. When Vianne learns that Reynaud has been trying to turn the town's people against her, she confronts him in his office. But he arrogantly asserts: "You'll be out of business by Easter." Then, just before dawn on Easter Sunday, the mayor breaks into Vianne's shop in a fit of rage. While destroying a candy statuette of a fertility goddess, a fleck of chocolate flies onto his lips, and as the film's tagline says, "One taste is all it takes." In a comic-tragic plot turn, the mayor can't resist gorging himself on chocolate, and he is later discovered by the village priest, sleeping in the shop window with a look of bovine contentment on his face.
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