As Best Picture nominating mistakes go, Chocolat is right up there with The Cider House Rules (not coincidentally, both movies were directed by Lasse Hallström), Scent of a Woman, and Ghost. Not to say it's a completely worthless movie, but compared to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it's Russell Stover next to Dan's Chocolates. I wouldn't turn it down if it was sitting on the counter in front of me, but it's unexceptional, factory-processed fare.
Charm can't be forced; whimsy can't be manufactured, but that's what Chocolat tries to do, stretching for magical realism so hard it's embarrassing. Like Water for Chocolate covered the same territory years ago, and much better, equating food with emotion. Here, chocolate leads to redemption and liberation -- this is like a faux-snooty remake of Footloose. In the John Lithgow role of upright, uptight civic leader is Alfred Molina, displaying all the subtle nuances of villainy that he did playing Snidely Whiplash in Dudley Do-Right. The exotic stranger blowing into town here is Juliette Binoche, not Kevin Bacon, and her magical chocolate gains her a few allies among the marginal citizens of the little French ville, just like Bacon's magical dancing won over Chris Penn and Lori Petty.
Chocolat wants to be a fable, and it does have all the predictability of a fairy tale, but not in a good way. Who wouldn't guess that the frumpy couple will suddenly rediscover the joy of sex, or that the abused wife will find the backbone to run away, or that the two old people furtively eyeing each other will eventually get together? And with the strained recounting of Binoche's background -- her mother was mystically compelled to wander whenever the north wind blew, and poor little Juliette's inherited mama's reluctant wanderlust -- the ending is crystal clear from the beginning. A more complex or intelligent film might have tried to inject some ambiguity into the plot, but this is not that film. With this box of chocolat, you always know exactly what you're going to get.
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