Chocolat(2000)

Plot Summary

• Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche), an expert chocolate maker, drifts across Europe with her 6-year-old daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol). Together, they follow the North wind. In the winter of 1959, they travel to a tranquil French village Lansquenet that closely adheres to tradition, as led by the village mayor, Comte Paul De Reynaud (Alfred Molina). In the village everyone knew their place and what was expected of them. And people kept an eye on each other, just in case they strayed from the expected path. Vianne opens a Chocolate shop just as the villagers begin observing the forty days of Lent, much to the chagrin of Reynaud. Vianne and Anouk stay in the apartment on top of the chocolate shop. Vianne has been to Andalusia, Vienna and Athens in the past among other places.Vianne works very hard to clean the shop, apply a fresh coat of paint, draw murals on it, and to curate her chocolates. Vianne curates her products from a 2000-year-old Mayan recipe. Vianne, who wears more provocative clothing, does not go to church, and has an illegitimate child, does not fit in well with the town's people, but is nevertheless optimistic about her business. Her friendly and alluring nature begins to win the villagers over one by one. Vianne uses a Mayan spinning wheel to determine the personality of her customers and offers them chocolates as per what she thinks they would enjoy and like.Reynaud, who will not admit that his wife has left him, speaks out against Vianne for tempting the people during Lent a time of abstinence and self-denial. Rivet (Michèle Gleizer) is Reynaud's house maid. Vianne offers Yvette (Elisabeth Commelin) a box of chocolates as an aphrodisiac and Yvette tries it on her husband Alphonse (Ron Cook). Alphonse is a lazy man, and an alcoholic. But eating the chocolates arouses the passion in him and they have amazing sex. The next day Yvette buys Vianne's entire supply.Audel (Leslie Caron) is a village widow whose husband died in World War I. Guillaume Blérot (John Wood) carries a long-time yearning for Madame Audel. Françoise "Fuffi" Drou (Hélène Cardona) is a beauty shop proprietor and rents her shop from Reynaud. Renaud bad mouths Vianne all over town, and when Vianne hears of it, she confronts him. Reynaud promises her that she would be out of business by Easter.Vianne tells Anouk the story of Vianne's father Georges (Arnaud Adam) who ran a Pharmacy. In 1927, Georges went to Central America and learned the medicinal properties of chocolate from a Mayan tribe. Mayans believes that Cacao had the power to unlock hidden yearnings and reveal destinies.One of the first to fall under the spell of Vianne and her confections is Armande (Judi Dench), her elderly, eccentric landlady. Armande laments that her cold, devoutly pious daughter Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss) will not let her see her grandson Luc because she is a "bad influence". Armande says that Caroline has forgot to live life since the death of her husband. Vianne arranges for Luc and his grandmother to see each other in the chocolate shop, where they develop a close bond. Caroline later reveals to Vianne that her mother is a diabetic, though Armande continues to indulge in the chocolate despite her condition. Caroline works for Reynaud as his PA at the office, and Reynaud has a crush on her.Vianne also develops a friendship with a disturbed woman, Josephine (Lena Olin), who is a victim of brutal beatings by her alcoholic husband Serge (Peter Stormare). After a particularly brutal blow to the head, Josephine leaves her husband and moves in with Vianne and Anouk. As she begins to work at the chocolate shop and Vianne teaches her craft, Josephine becomes a self-confident, changed woman. Under the instruction of Reynaud, Serge seemingly changes into a better man, and he asks Josephine to come back to him. Finally happy and fulfilled, Josephine declines. A drunken Serge breaks into the chocolate shop later that night and attempts to attack both women before Josephine, in a moment of empowerment, knocks him out with a skillet.As the rivalry between Vianne and Reynaud worsens, a band of river gypsies camp out on the outskirts of the village. While most of the town objects to their presence, Vianne embraces them, developing a mutual attraction to the gypsy Roux (Johnny Depp). Together they hold a birthday party for Armande with other village members and gypsies on Roux's boat. When Caroline sees Luc, who came out secretly to go to the party, dancing with her mother, she begins to see how rigid she is with her son and that his grandmother's influence in his life may not be a bad thing. Vianne also brings Audel and Blerot together.After the party Vianne, Josephine, and Anouk all sleep on the boats, where Roux and Vianne make love. Late that night, Serge sets the boat where Josephine and Anouk are sleeping on fire. Both escape unharmed, but Vianne's faith in the village is shaken. Also, that night, Luc returns to his grandmother's living room to see that she has finally died from complications of diabetes, devastating both him and his mother. After the fire, Roux packs up and leaves with his group, much to Vianne's sadness.Reynaud initially believes the fire was divine intervention until Serge confesses to starting it, saying he thought it was what Reynaud wanted. Horrified, Reynaud orders him to leave the village and not to come back.With the return of the north wind, Vianne decides that she cannot win against Reynaud or the strict traditions of the town and resolves to move to another place. Anouk, now attached to the town, refuses to go, and during a scuffle, the urn containing Vianne's mother's ashes breaks, scattering them over the floor. While recovering the ashes, Vianne goes into her kitchen to see most of the townspeople, who have come to love her and the way she has changed their lives, making chocolate for a festival Vianne had planned on Easter Sunday.Despite the major change in the town, Reynaud remains staunch in his abstinence from pleasures such as chocolate. On the Saturday evening before Easter, Reynaud sees Caroline, to whom he is attracted, leaving the chocolate shop and is devastated. On the Saturday evening before Easter, he opens the chocolate display and destroys the various confections with a knife. When a small piece of chocolate lands on his lip, he gives into the seduction and devours the chocolate before collapsing into tears and eventually falling asleep.The next day, Vianne promises not to reveal what happened, and a mutual respect between them is established. Reynaud apologizes for his behavior. Père Henri (Hugh O'Conor), the town's young priest, gives a sermon emphasizing the importance of humanity over divinity.The narrator, a grown-up Anouk, reveals that the sermon and festival are a success. Reynaud and Caroline start a relationship half a year later. Josephine takes over Serge's cafe, renaming it Café Armande. The north wind returns, but this time Vianne throws her mother's ashes out into the wind. Anouk concludes the story: Roux returns in the summer to be with Vianne and Anouk.

Storyline

• It's early 1959 in a provincial French village, where residents know their place, and if they see something against the unspoken rules, they are to look the other way. The only exception to this rule is the Mayor, le Comte de Reynaud, who is seen as the town's moral authority, even more so than Pere Henri, the new young Catholic priest whose sermons are vetted by le Comte. Literally blowing into town is free spirit Vianne Rocher and her adolescent daughter Anouk Rocher, who move from place to place wherever the north wind takes them. Renting the long empty space that used to house the patisserie, the property owned by elderly Armande Voizin, Vianne instead opens a chocolaterie which none of the residents are aware of until it opens. While Vianne, through the chocolaterie, is able to help certain residents in exposing some of the village's hidden ills, she nonetheless raises the ire of le Comte in almost everything about her being: that she is promoting the indulgence of chocolate in the season of Lent, a period of abstinence and penitence; that she does not attend church; and that she has never been married meaning that Anouk is illegitimate. Vianne is viewed in an even less flattering light when she takes up with Roux, the lead of a band of self-confessed river rats floating into town, he, who like Vianne, is a nomadic free spirit. The questions become who between Vianne and le Comte will outlast the other or come to an understanding of the errors of their ways to be able to live in harmony with the other. — Huggo When single mother Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her six-year-old daughter, Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) move to rural France and open a chocolate shop, with Sunday hours, across the street from the local church, they are met with some skepticism. But as soon as they coax the townspeople into enjoying their delicious products, they are warmly welcomed. 1960, small town France. Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her young daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol) move into town and open a chocolate shop just as Lent is beginning. The town's small-minded Mayor Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina) can't accept this and does his best to shut her down, but her warm personality and incredible chocolates manage to win over many townsfolk. Things get shaken up even more when a group of river drifters, led by Roux (Johnny Depp), stop into town (to the even greater distress of the Mayor) and Vianne takes up with him. Meanwhile, she's been helping Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin) out of her abusive marriage, and her equally freethinking landlord, Amande Voizin (Dame Judi Dench), get together with her grandson, Luc Clairmont Aurelien Parent Koenig), whose mother, Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss), doesn't approve of Amande's ways. — Jon Reeves