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Chocolat by Karen Moline Director Lasse Halstrom continues his oral fixation with this fairy tale about individuality and redemption, based on the novel by Joanne Harris. In an old-fashioned village in decidedly non-chic rural France, two red riding hoods mysteriously appear one night. One is the unrepentant and proud single mother, Vianne (Juliette Binoche), and the other her imaginative daughter Anouk. Before you can say Richard Simmons, Vianne opens a chocolate shop and begins transforming the crabby town inhabitants into passionate chocaholics. Her crabby landlady (Judi Dench) becomes less crabby; widow Leslie Caron finds love again; Lena Olin (in a lovely switch from the roles she and Binoche played in The Unbearable Lightness of Being) finds the courage to confront her brute hubby (Peter Stormare); sexy tramp (Johnny Depp, competing with Brad Pitt's boxer in Snatch for incomprehensible accent of the year) learns how to bathe. Trouble in truffle paradise comes with the calorie-counting mayor (scene-stealing Alfred Molina), who's incensed that Vianne's chocolates are being sold during Lent. You'd think that in France telling someone what to eat would be tantamount to the local priest trying to shut down the community whorehouse, but some tension was obviously needed to cut the sugar overload. Will the Mayor learn to dip his fingers in something more filling than holy water? Will Vianne find true love? Will eating too much ganache before finishing your haricots verts give you a stomachache? |
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