Merci pour le chocolat

I mostly went to see "Merci pour le chocolat" because I had never seen a Claude Chabrol movie, so I have no basis of comparison with his other work.

The veddy British subtitles called it "Night Cap" which is much less interesting and resonant of the movie's images than the title of the novel it's based on, "The Chocolate Web," which was written by Charlotte Armstrong, but seems very Ruth Rendellian.

Isabelle Huppert of course is never uninteresting to watch, though this is the second movie in a row where the poor woman had to play a successful, middle-aged career woman with a serious problem, as in "The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste)." Hmm, do the French have a problem with such women, making them so twisted?

The movie starts out like a family saga of family businesses and secrets; I even thought it was going to do for the chocolate industry what "Les Destinees sentimentales" did for the porcelain industry.

But gradually the relationships come together into a mystery that doesn't quite pay off but gives a few horror chills in the process.

(originally written 9/2/2002)

Huppert may be a bit difficult to swallow here, as difficult as her chocolate. One marvels that she expects others to love and trust her, and that most do. Such marvelous manners! Is that all it takes? But the film turns on her carefully mannered performance and Chabrol's ever present laughter at it. He places sane, emotionally healthy family against its opposite. Phantom daughter Jeanne's home seems all window, always sunlit, while Mika's (Huppert) is a labyrinth, windows downplayed. People make little journeys to a bedroom, to a music room. How on earth does Jeanne come so early to the conclusion she does about Mica's chocolate? The answer is simply that she comes from the sane side of the dichotomy, yet concluding what she does, right or not no matter, is un-sane. Barging in, as she does, in the first place is less than sane. Yet she's a perfect foil for Huppert.

The piano lessons are wonderful, almost reason alone for seeing the film. If you sit through the closing credits, you'll get to see what Huppert's been knitting.

In Lausanne, the aspirant pianist Jeanne Pollet (Anna Mouglalis) has lunch with her mother Louise Pollet (Brigitte Catillon), her boyfriend Axel (Mathieu Simonet) and his mother. Jeanne leans that when she was born, a nurse had mistakenly told to the prominent pianist André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc) that she would be his daughter. André has just remarried his first wife, the heiress of a Swiss chocolate factory Marie-Claire "Mika" Muller (Isabelle Huppert), and they live in Lausanne with André's second marriage son Guillaume Polonski (Rodolphe Pauly). Out of the blue, Jeanne visits André and he offers to give piano classes to help her in her examination. Jeanne becomes closer to André and visits him every day; soon she discovers that Mika might be drugging her stepson with Rohypnol. Further, she might have killed André's second wife Lisbeth.

"Merci pour le Chocolat" is another ambiguous film by Claude Chabrol about evilness, alienation and manipulation. Isabelle Huppert, who is one of Chabrol's favorite's actresses, performs a wicked lady. The essence of her evil is not explained, but she is capable to drug and kill her best friend and incapable to love or donate to help children. Jeanne Pollet is manipulative and greedy, and uses the incident in the maternity hospital to get closer to André. When she sees the photo of Lisbeth in the bedroom, she returns to the pianos room where André is and puts her hands on her face exactly the same way Lisbeth did. André Polonski is alienated and lives his life in the world of music, and doping to sleep and ignoring to see what Mika did to Lisbeth. They live a hypocrite life with Guillaume, who does not have any objective in life. This film is not among the best works of Claude Chabrol, but anyway it is entertaining. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Teia de Chocolate" ("The Chocolate Cobweb")

Note: On 12 January 2025, I saw this film again.

Sometimes a comedic story idea could make for an emotionally engrossing thriller instead. Such is the case with MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT. Chabrol turns what would be a situation comedy plot into a compelling thriller about failed relationships. A respected pianist Andre Polonski (Jacques Dutronc) figures that a maternity ward mishap caused him and his wife, Marie (Isabelle Hubbert) a chocolate manufacturer, to raise the wrong child.

Their college age `son', Guillaume, actually belongs to somebody else. Andre's real child seems to be Jeanne, (Anna Maoglalis) a lovely piano student. Jeanne and her boyfriend, a medical lab intern, are trying to figure out what poison will do some undetected dirty work (Chabrol originally studied to be a pharmacist) Chabrol started his career in the 1950's co-authoring well respected essays on Alfred Hitchcock with fellow countryman and future director Eric Rohmer. Unlike DePalma with his very obvious `Hey, hey look, what Hitchcock film is my scene copied from?' Chabrol wisely keeps his Hitchcock copying to a minimum with subtle Hitchcock styled camera movement. Instead of celebrating `technical innovation', Chabrol uses his camera to keep us gazing at the film's characters.

The performances, particularly that of Isabelle Huppert, are about the only thing to recommend this film. It certainly looks stylish and polished, but if you give one moment's thought to it, you'll realize that not one bit of the plot makes any sense. To top it off, the denouement's arrival comes out of left field, thereby leaving it far from being credible. This film will certainly not be remembered.