An offscreen narrator opens Chocolat by pronouncing ’’once upon a time, ’’ which I guess is to innoculate us against anything whimsical or cloying that might follow. The funny thing is that this little fable, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, avoids going down either road.
A cloistered and pious little French village, some of whose residents have French accents while others do not, is led by its censorious mayor to spurn a newcomer named Vianne, who has opened a chocolate shop. The mayor-who resents that Vianne hung out her shingle during Lent and refuses to attend Mass- holds the young parish priest by the scruff of the neck, and fights to keep her popularity from growing. But the candies, with names like Nipples of Venus, are not ordinary: Vianne knows not only that cacao beans are tasty, but how they can be good for what ails you spiritually.
Vianne’s few allies include her young daughter, an abused wife, and a stubborn old woman and her sheltered grandson. A mid-film plot catalyst arrives in the form of more outsiders: a group of gypsy like ’’river rats’’ who are somehow Irish and who are led by guitar strumming Roux.
Romantic films like Chocolat-they surely qualify as a sub-genre- are supposed to be charming, wise and just a little bit naughty. As scripted by Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on a novel by Joanne Harris, Chocolat is just enough of each to get by. Most characters are elevated above typage or abstraction by some good performances, especially Dench’s and Molina’s, the latter as a sympathetic prig, a gentlemanly bully who can not admit his wife left him. Binoche’s warm presence and her character’s odd, cracking laugh, meanwhile, help bring her potentially otherworldly character down to earth.
Hallstrom, a Swedish director who had a mid-80s arthouse hit with My Life As a Dog, made his US debut in the early 90’s and has pretty well stuck with American productions since. Chocolat isn’t nearly as involving as his previous film, The Cider House Rules. But neither is it a chocolate you put back in the box after one bite.