Chocolat

Directed by Lasse Hallström, Chocolat follows Juliette Binoche’s Vianne as she shakes up a very small (and very conservative) French village by opening up a chocolaterie alongside her young daughter (Victoire Thivisol’s Anouk). Filmmaker Hallström, armed with Joanne Harris’ screenplay, delivers a reasonably pleasant yet thoroughly generic drama that does, for the most part, unfold exactly as one might’ve anticipated, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the movie’s far-from-innovative atmosphere is compounded by an ongoing emphasis on familiar, crowd-pleasing digressions and encounters – with the overlong running time and excessively deliberate pace doing little to alleviate the arms-length atmosphere, ultimately. There’s little doubt, then, that Chocolat benefits from its assortment of charming, entertaining performances and smattering of compelling interludes, with, in terms of the former, Binoche’s engaging turn as the mysterious protagonist going a long way towards smoothing over the erratic narrative’s bumps and lulls. (It doesn’t hurt, either, that Binoche has been surrounded by such inherently compelling performers as Alfred Molina, Judy Dench, and Johnny Depp.) By the time the almost eye-rollingly upbeat (but admittedly affecting) finale rolls around, Chocolat has confirmed its place as a watchable piece of work that generally manages to pass the time in a fairly unexceptional way.

**1/2 out of ****