21 Jump Street Page - Johnny Depp - Article 6 - 'Chocolat' is a Succulent, Seductive and Instructive Cinematic Confection

Chocolate is supposed te be an aprodisiac, and the current film "Chocolat" builds on and further intensifies that claim with its story about how the mysterious owner of a chocolate shop turns on the heretofore frigid residents of a small town in France in the late 1950's.

Passion

Specifies: the town and its young parish priest are under the thumb of its righteous, ultra-moralistic mayor (Alfred Molina), who thinks that passion is the prime tool that the devil uses to corrupt men's souls.

Even worse, the chocolate shop owner (Juliette Binoche) is a single mother who doesn't believe in religion. Worst of all, she opens her shop during the season of Lent, a time for making sacrifices, not luxuriating in the heady pleasures of chocolate!

So, Binoche gets on the mayor's bad side early in the story, and he urges his constituents to boycott her new establishment. Instead of closeing her shop and shamefacedly leaving town, however, Binoche keeps whipping up her succulent and seductive confections, which soon have a magical effect on their new devotees:

Battered Wife

A battered wife (Lena Olin) summons up the courage to leave her bruitish husband. A shy man "dares" to show his affection for an old woman (Leslie Caron). A boy is reunited with his grandmother (Judi Dench), who has been kept away from him by her own daughter, who regards her as a bad influence on him.

Most "shocking" of all, the mayor himself eventually falls for the seductive, liberating qualifties of chocolate. No, he doesn't end up in Binoche's arms (even chocolate cannot be that powerfully persuasive), but his transformation is still impressive to be hold.

But the movie is interested in more than just chocolate as a turn-on and healer of broken psyches and relationships. It is really about how an outside influence can challenge some of our dearly-held beliefs and free us from warped notions of what's right and wrong.

Reprehensible

In "Chocolat", the town gets intimidated by the arrival of a band of gypsies (led by Johnny Depp). To the small-minded residents, the gypsies represent everything threatening and reprehensible that they want to keep from "infecting" their beloved village, so the unwanted visitors are kept at arm's length and refused service at the local bar. To top it all, their barge is put to the torch, and some people's lives are endangered.

Thankfully, by the film's end, the residents' minds have been opened, and some problematic relationships have been worked out.

Benignted notions

Chocolate serves as the objective correlative for the liberating influence many of us need to challenge the benignted notions that cause us to be cruel to others, and keep us from becoming the best persons we can possibly be.

All this doesn't mean that viewing "Chocolat" is a pluperfect treat.... Still the movie has more than enough plus points to make it a must-see film. Catch it before it melts away!

Final Note: It's interesting that "Chocolat" is being shown here (in the PI) during the season of Lent. Just like the characters in the movie, perhaps we too can use the occasion to seeing the film as our time to question our own small-minded notions, whatever they may be.