This is a review of the movie Chocolat that I wrote in 2001 for a class on, well, on writing reviews. The teacher liked it but suggested that it was a bit too idiosyncratic to be appropriate for most publications, so I never bothered to do anything with it, but it seems it might find a home here, especially since I posted all this stuff about movies.
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Once at a party a friend of mine who had been sitting near my television said to me, "I can't believe your movie collection. It's so...brazen."
"You mean ‘cause they're almost all chick movies?" I asked.
"It's not just that," she said. "It's that you have them out, where people can see them. I mean, some of my friends own a lot of these same movies, but they put them away before people come over. But you're not even embarrassed."
It's true: I like chick movies, I watch chick movies, I buy chick movies; I don't care who knows. I might add that my collection is alphabetized, ranging from Annie Hall, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Chasing Amy, Clueless to Sense and Sensibility, Singin' in the Rain, Sixteen Candles, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Truth or Dare. I feel entitled to add that I like other kinds of movies as well--I love Lawrence of Arabia and The Pride of the Yankees, and I don't think those qualify as chick movies. But then, I haven't gotten around to buying those movies. Maybe I should. Nothing in my collection starts with L or P.
Chocolat, directed by Lasse Hallstrom and up for Best Picture in the 2001 Academy Awards, is the best chick movie I have seen in a good long time. First of all, the clothes are terrific. Juliette Binoche and Victoire Thivosol (who plays Binoche's daughter) arrive in a tiny French village at the end of the 1950s dressed in matching red cloaks that would make Little Red Riding Hood jealous. They carry two medium-sized suitcases, but you'd need at least two suitcases more to hold the entirety of Juliette Binoche's marvelous collection of straight skirts, full skirts, cute sweater sets and colorful high heels. I especially loved her bias-cut circle plaid skirts, one of which has really cool patch pockets. When Binoche sets about painting the dingy walls of the patisserie she intends to turn into a chocolaterie, she does so in a fabulous fitted off-the-shoulder purple blouse, and not one drop of paint is spattered on that blouse, which is good because it's really flattering and shows up again and again. I imagine she also has a decent collection of push-up bras in one of those suitcases--at least, I'm guessing she wears one under that purple blouse.
Carrie-Anne Moss, who was so drop-dead cool in black leather and vinyl as Trinity in The Matrix, is here a prim widow who wears elegant suits and pillbox hats a la Jackie Kennedy. Her mother is played by Judi Dench, and while not all of Dench's costumes are particularly remarkable, she is provided with a very flattering haircut and wide-brimmed hat just in time for her birthday party. Even the mayor's absent wife has a closet full of fabulous clothes--and when the mayor, played by Alfred Molina, takes garden shears to a flowered chiffon party dress because he's angry at his wife for running off and leaving him, I had to suppress a gasp of horror.
Nor are men's fashions ignored. The hair and make-up crew did a wonderful job of adding striking blond highlights to Johnny Depp's dark hair, which he wears pulled back in a severe, straight ponytail. Depp plays a vagabond whose presence threatens the towns tranquility, and he is suitably vagabondish in a ratty leather blazer, fraying sweaters and tattered pants. Alfred Molina looks quite dignified in a series of well-cut suits, and the priest, a curly-headed, doe-eyed, callow actor whose name I forgot to note, gets to wear exceptionally lovely and elaborately embroidered vestments.
The movie is set in France, and while no one actually speaks French in the movie, at least most of the actors--only three of whom are French--speak with French accents. An exception is Johnny Depp, who acquired a fairly awful and unconvincing Irish accent for this film. The French setting means that we get many nice shots of quaint homes and large trees along a slow green river.
I don't want to make it sound like clothes, hair, accents and a picturesque setting are all this movie has to offer. Keep in mind, it's about chocolate. I suggest you bring some with you while you watch this movie. There are lots of scenes of melted chocolate being stirred around in big bowls, and you can get pretty hungry. At one point Lena Olin licks the knife she is using to stir such a pot of chocolate, and while I winced at the unsanitariness of that act--after all, this chocolate is going to be for sale--I couldn't help wishing for a chocolate-covered knife to lick myself.
The movie also has a plot, which I found compelling and moving. It's a story about the cost of self-deprivation and petty intolerance, and the rewards of generosity. One of the things I liked best about this movie was its generous attitude towards its characters. None of them are whole-heartedly bad; all are offered redemption. The fact that redemption arrives in the form of chocolate might seem cloyingly sweet to some viewers, but there was enough darkness and bitterness in this chocolate for me. I'm going to buy it when it comes out on video, even though I already own a couple of movies starting with C.
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Just for the record, I never got around to buying a copy of Chocolat. Several of the other movies I mentioned are no longer in my collection, because I sold most of my VHS cassettes after I got a dvd player. I now own Lawrence of Arabia on dvd, and watch it regularly.
Now, I own Lawrence of Arabia on DVD, as well.
Thank you.
Other L's and P's in my collection include: Lost in Translation, Lady of Burlesque, Little Princess, Living End, People Vs. Larry Flynt, Poison, Postcards from the Edge, Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Psycho (1999), and Pulp Fiction.
I have never seen Chocolat, but now I might just have to.
Thanks.
In addition to "Lawrence of Arabia," other movies starting with L that I own these days are "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Longest Day." I now own two movies starting with P: "Persuasion" and "Pride and Prejudice" (which was actually a made for TV mini-series but I guess it still counts).
I hope you like LoA, SO. He would like you.