![]() ![]() The film began a limited release in the United States on December 22, 2000, and went on general release on January 19, 2001. Soon, she and her chocolate influence the lives of the townspeople of this repressed French community in different and interesting ways. Adapted by screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs, Chocolat tells the story of Vianne Rocher, played by Juliette Binoche, who arrives in the fictional French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes at the beginning of Lent with her six-year-old daughter, Anouk. ![]() Unfortunately, the role here is one that needs someone who shines larger than life with either the sunniness that Penelope Cruz displayed in Woman on Top or the saintly radiance of Lumi Cavazos in Like Water for Chocolate.įor reasons inexplicable, Chocolat became a favourite with the Academy Awards crowd and it was nominated for that year’s Best Picture Award, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Music, Juliette Binoche for Best Actress and Judi Dench for Best Supporting Actress, although won none of these.Chocolat ( French pronunciation: ) is a 2000 film, based on the 1999 novel Chocolat by the English author, Joanne Harris, directed by Lasse Hallström. Juliette Binoche is a lovely actress but she is all wrong for the part (apart from being the only actor in the principal cast who is actually French). Juliette Binoche is wooed by Gypsy Johnny Depp At most, Chocolat‘s big climactic transformation has Alfred Molina found drunk in the shop window after an orgy of chocolate eating. Compare Chocolat to either Like Water for Chocolate or Woman on Top – these are films where the respective directors delight in and takes exuberant flights of fantasy along with the unleashed passions. In fact, Lasse Hallström seems opposed to the Magical Realist elements and plays them down, making the magical transformations of personality seem wholly unremarkable. The way it is pitched it suggests that Juliette Binoche is a catalyst in the unleashing of frustrated passions but when it comes to passions everything almost entirely takes places almost off screen – the most we ever see is Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp kissing in medium angle, for instance. For all Chocolat‘s championing of joie de vivre over tranquilite, one suspects that Hallstrom was more on the side of tranquilite – the film is so frustratingly mannered. ![]() Throughout, Lasse Hallstrom never finds anything to say that is not a cliché. Although, having staked its conflict out, the film never gets particularly worked up about its outrages and the end lets the antagonists off the hook incredibly lightly. Chocolat sets up clichéd Apollonian-Dionysian conflicts – free-spiritiedness and joie de vivre vs order, tradition, religion and temperance. Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) sets up shop in the town of Lansquernet The director of Chocolat is Lasse Hallström who previously made the likes of Abba – The Movie (1977) and just prior to this made the incredibly overrated The Cider House Rules (1999), a work that reduced John Irving’s fine black comic bite and line-up of eccentrics to typical Hollywood sentimental mush, and later did little better with Annie Proulx’s novel in The Shipping News (2001) or Casanova (2005), before finding his true calling with Nicholas Sparks adaptations such as Dear John (2010) and Safe Haven (2013), followed by the A Dog’s Purpose (2017) and as co-director of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018). This trend began with Babettes Feast (1987), was popularised with Like Water for Chocolate (1992) and has blossomed with the likes of Simply Irresistible (1999), Woman on Top (2000) and The Mistress of Spices (2005). Chocolat falls into a certain mini-theme that has been staked out by Magical Realism films in recent years – magical cooking. ![]()
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