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Chocolat

Inhalt & Kritik

In einem kleinen, malerischen französischen Dorf herrschen die strengen katholischen Dogmen vergangener Jahrhunderte. Der autoritäre Bürgermeister Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina) sorgt mit ständigen Ermahnungen dafür, dass sich das Dorf nicht von den moralischen Ketten befreit. Mitten in eine Welt, in der schon freie Gedanken eine Sünde sind, stolpert Vianne (Juliette Binoche), um eine Chocolaterie zu eröffnen. Die zarte Versuchung aus der Kakaobohne erscheint dem Comte während der Fastenzeit jedoch als reine Sünde. Es folgt eine Hexenjagd, die zunächst erfolgreich einen Boykott der feinen Leckereien herbeiführt, bevor die ersten Dorfbewohner neue Lebensfreuden entdecken...
Lasse Hallström zeichnet schöne Bilder des romantischen Dorfes und seines kleinen Schokoladeladens. Trotz guter Besetzung mit Juliette Binoche und Johnny Depp fehlt dem Film ein wenig Spannung. Zwar gibt es einige lustige und rührende Szenen, insgesamt kommt der Film aber bei weitem nicht an Hallströms genialen "Gottes Werk und Teufels Beitrag" heran.

Kristian Bauer

That Old Slack Magic
Lasse Hallström's Chocolat shares with the director's previous Miramax Oscar cause—the sheepish, unwittingly contradictory pro-choice homily The Cider House Rules—an assumed demographic, and panders accordingly. A condescending, self-congratulatory attack on provincial sanctimony, Chocolat (sadly unrelated to Claire Denis's terrific first feature of the same name) positions a kind, wise, modern woman against the twin evils of organized religion and institutional patriarchy. Though bludgeoningly metaphoric, this cloying fable on the dangers of appetite suppression is at bottom too literal-minded to accommodate any potentially helpful magic-realist flourishes. Worse, its broad farcical pratfalls are grossly incompatible with its zealous lunges for moral significance.
Accounting for the missing e in the title, the setting is une petite ville tranquille in the early '50s, where the inhabitants speak numerous versions of a lightly French-accented English. Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter (Ponette heartbreaker Victoire Thivisol) blow into town in matching red capes, and the locals are promptly scandalized when the sexy, soulful single mother opens a chocolaterie (during Lent, no less). But the establishment, with its bold turquoise walls and yummy calorific treats, becomes a serene oasis of enlightenment in this drab, self-denying bourg. Vianne divines her customers' favorite candies, matchmakes, engineers reconciliations, revives sex lives, and raises feminist consciousness. Her witchy traits are later ascribed to her Mayan mother, from whom she inherited the therapeutic secrets of the cocoa bean and the mission of rampaging through the French countryside leaving a trail of truffles-induced epiphanies in her wake. Vianne's contagious heathenism provokes Alfred Molina's apoplectic mayor to declare a jihad, soon accelerated by the arrival of a band of Irish "river rats" led by Johnny Depp (who plays an almost identical part in Sally Potter's upcoming, inadvertently riotous The Man Who Cried).
Airy, pseudo-folkloric gibberish at best, Chocolat affects shrill agnosticism in the service of a disingenuous pro-tolerance rallying cry. Reduced to pawns, the charismatic cast—battered kleptomaniac Lena Olin, sweet-toothed diabetic Judi Dench, priggish control freak Carrie-Anne Moss—goes to waste, as does the blessedly swoony coupling of Binoche and Depp. More troubling, it's now clear that the limpid, unforced melancholy of Hallström's early films has Miramaxed into industrial-strength sweetener—the chief ingredient in this confection is corn syrup.

Dennis Lim

(...) The chocolatier will perhaps evoke for sardonic viewers the old dope peddler of Tom Lehrer's song, "spreading joy wherever [s] he goes." Indeed, some of the desserts apparently contain aphrodisiacs. The movie itself may suggest to those who find themselves unsusceptible to its fabulistic charms how easy it has become to travesty the manner of what used to be thought of as "art" movies. This one has something of their air — an attractive, slightly exotic setting, characters who appear to have some substance and some curious quirks. But everything is spun toward sugary sentimentality. And relentless predictability. Vianne always knows, and we always know, what effect her concoctions will have on her customers. They always shake off their repressions and troubles at precisely the right inspirational moment. Dench's character even manages to die just when she should, with her life's work neatly completed. Made with a sort of tasteful vulgarity, this movie never disappoints the slack-minded audience's anticipation of the humanistically healing banality, the life-crushing behavioral cliché.

R.S., TIME MAgazin

(...) "Chocolat" was directed by Lasse Hallstrom ("The Cider House Rules," "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," "My Life as a Dog"). It's the sort of movie you can enjoy as a superior fable, in which the values come from children's fairy tales but adult themes have been introduced. It goes without saying in such stories that organized religion is the province of prudes and hypocrites, but actually "Chocolat" is fairly easy on the local establishment--they're not evil people, although they resent outsiders like the Depp character; they're more like tranquil sleepwalkers who wake up to smell the coffee, or in this case, the chocolate. Even Reynaud is converted and is shocked when he finds that his reckless language has inspired a local dimwit to set a dangerous fire.
I enjoyed the movie on its own sweet level, while musing idly on the box-office prospects of a film in which the glowing, life-affirming local Christians prevailed over glowering, prejudiced, puritan and bitter Druid worshippers. That'll be--as John Wayne once said--the day.

RogerEbert, Chicago Sun-Times

(...) I know: it sounds like "magic realism" territory yet again. But not this time. Binoche and director Lasse Halstrom (The Cider House Rules) persuade us that while Vianne knows how to pull people's chains, she's hobbled by a dark destiny of her own that makes her a little too aggressive and self-righteous. Moreover, she's blind to the damage of her rootless ways on herself and others. When an Irish river rat (Johnny Depp) drifts into town and begins romancing Vianne -- causing them both to think discomforting thoughts about settling down -- no amount of chocolate can save the heroine from her fears.
But let's face facts. While the story is perfectly pleasant and the key actors tread, albeit marvelously, familiar territory (Molina as the pillar of rectitude, Binoche the emotionally frozen survivor, etc.), what makes this film a film is that it serves up a bountiful variation on the startling wonders of Vianne's shop. What could be closer to the heart of Vianne's mission -- penetrating bruised, encrusted hearts by offering intensely private experiences of chocolate -- than sitting alone in a darkened theater, stirred again by the ethereal/earthy, cool/hot pairing of Binoche and Olin, whose contrapuntal magic was so vital to The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Or feeling a strange thrill about the raven beauty and enigma of supporting player Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), or the inscrutability of young Hugh O'Conor (The Young Poisoner's Handbook)? Hallstrom offers us these gifts in a discrete legend that plays on-screen, as it should, as a dream suitable for sharing or clutching greedily to one's bosom -- like a chocolate box.

Tom Keogh, Film.com

Auszeichnungen

2001 Nominierung Academy Award (Best Actress in a Leading Role) - Juliette Binoche
2001 Nominierung Academy Award (Best Actress in a Supporting Role) - Judi Dench
2001 Nominierung Academy Award (Best Music, Original Score) - Rachel Portman
2001 Nominierung Academy Award (Best Picture) - David Brown, Kit Golden, Leslie Holleran
2001 Nominierung Academy Award (Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published) - Robert Nelson Jacobs
2001 Nominierung American Cinema Editors 'Eddie' (Best Edited Feature Film - Comedy or Musical) - Andrew Mondshein
2001 Nominierung Berlin International Film Festival (Golden Berlin Bear) - Lasse Hallström
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Cinematography) - Roger Pratt
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Costume Design) - Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Make Up/Hair) - unknown
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role) - Juliette Binoche
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Production Design) - David Gropman
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Best Screenplay - Adapted) - Robert Nelson Jacobs
2001 Nominierung British Academy Awards Film Award (Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role) - Judi Dench, Lena Olin
2001 Nominierung Costume Designers Guild Award (Excellence for Costume Design for Film - Period/Fantasy) - Renee Ehrlich Kalfus
2001 Nominierung Golden Globe (Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical)
2001 Nominierung Golden Globe (Best Original Score - Motion Picture) - Rachel Portman
2001 Nominierung Golden Globe (Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical) - Juliette Binoche
2001 Nominierung Golden Globe (Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture) - Judi Dench
2001 Nominierung Golden Satellite Award (Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Drama) - Judi Dench
2000 San Diego Film Critics Society Award (Best Screenplay, Adapted) - Robert Nelson Jacobs
2001 Nominierung Screen Actors Guild Award (Actor Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role) - Juliette Binoche
2001 Nominierung Screen Actors Guild Award (Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role) - Judi Dench
2001 Nominierung Screen Actors Guild Award (Outstanding Performance by the Cast of a Theatrical Motion Picture)
2001 Nominierung Society of Motion Picture and Television Art Directors (Award for Excellence in Production Design Feature Film - Contemporary Films) - David Gropman
2001 Nominierung USC Scripter Award - Joanne Harris, Robert Nelson Jacobs
2001 Nominierung Writers Guild of America Screen Award (Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published) - Robert Nelson Jacobs