Merci pour le chocolat

BEWARE: These comments give away crucial elements of the plot!!! Don't read these comments unless you've seen the movie!!!

Even though I don't find the movie works well as a thriller, I am glad I watched it. Here is why:

Assume that your behavior is determined by your nature, i.e. by the genes that have been passed down to you from your parents. Is it then still possible to hold someone responsible for what he or she is doing? In other words: Why do things happen the way they happen? This is IMHO the fundamental question that Claude Chabrol asks in his latest movie Sweet Poison.

From very early on in the movie the alignment of characters is fairly obvious: A couple consisting of a femme fatale and a detached pianist, their dull son and as a twin personality the young, alert, and beautiful woman, and her mother, a doctor. Whereas the social relations between these characters are plain: couple, son, daughter, the biological relations between them are highly questionable: the son had been conceived by a woman who later on died in a car-accident; daughter and son might have been swapped on their very first day of life; the doctor conceived her child with the help of an anonymous donator of semen; the femme fatale had been adopted by her parents. This absurd number of ambiguities seems to indicate that this is really the main theme of the movie. The viewer is led to believe that the swapping actually took place and that the daughter has inherited the musical talent from the pianist, while the son inherits the dull unspecificity of his anonymous father.

All four main characters - the couple, son, and daughter - simply live out what has been given to them by nature: the father is a famous pianist, his daughter follows his foot-steps. The femme fatale (symbolically portrayed as a spider) tries to kill the women that get in between herself and the pianist (the mother of the son and the pianist's daughter). The daughter lives an interesting life, which includes playing piano. The son doesn't act at all.

The femme fatale kills the mother of the pianist's son with the help of sweet poison (reflecting the German title: Suesses Gift). When the daughter starts to interfere with the life of the couple, the femme fatale takes the exact same steps (not buying drugs, hurting her son's foot, sending the woman into town to buy drugs, mixing sleeping drugs into the woman's drink) in order to kill the daughter, too. She behaves like a spider that builds a web and immediately starts to build another one when a scientist destroys the web the spider just made: It is a built-in program that's running, not something that the wasp decides to do or not to do. When the pianist finds out about his wife's nature, he doesn't grab her by the throat or accuses her. He just asks her why she did it and then goes on to play piano. This answers the first question: If humans are driven by their nature one cannot hold them responsible for their deeds anymore. Because it is just their nature and they cannot help it.

However, when the femme fatale tries to kill a woman who is close to the pianist the second time around, she fails. Her plan goes the same way as the first time. Whether she succeeds or fails depends on chance, i.e. circumstances that lie beyond her influence, like better car technology. What determines the outcome of things then - the second question - is not human will or drive, but random chance. It is nothing but luck whether things work out or not, if we assume that it is all in our nature/genes.

After seeing this film, I wanted to rush to read the Charlotte Armstrong novel The Chocolate Cobweb, not because I was wowed by the source material but rather to try and fathom what on earth she was trying for. Perhaps the fault can be blamed on the adaptation by Caroline Eliacheff and director Claude Chabrol. It's hard to know but what is certain is that this treatment poses more questions than it answers. Mysteries can be fun without having all the motivations explained, since human behaviour is often inexplicable, but here I found I had the same response as in Chabrol's La Ceremonie when Jacqueline Bisset's family are blown away - shock and disbelief. The plot contrivance that leads Anna Mouglalis to the house of Isabelle Huppert and Jacques Dutronc is as tenuous as a spider's web. One hears it and thinks, this can't be all there is?! And whilst Huppert supplies some intriguing duplicitious body language - note the movement of her legs as subtext in the scene where she visits Mouglalis' mother - there is more suggested than actually revealed. It also reminded me of the non-end to Chabrol's L'Enfer, where he dared not provide a conclusion to the unfinished screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Chabrol's camera occasionally pans past Huppert to make observations, and the edit from a photo of Dutronc's first wife whom Mouglalis resembles (the actress plays her in flashback) to Mouglalis listening to music, her hands covering her face in the identical pose, is amusing. But the climactic revelation at the end has no weight, as arbitrary as Huppert's movement from sitting enveloped by her web-patterned lacework, to a long one take closeup where she cries, to folding into a foetal position. The titular chocolate is a red herring, but I was more disappointed that the implication of incest with her son had no basis. Perhaps one's inclination to project onto the narrative is an indication of it's lack of focus. Mouglalis conveys a strong screen presence, and perhaps because Huppert and Chabrol have worked together to great effect before, one's expectations of her contribution in his films is high. But I can't feel I can criticise Huppert. She seems keyed to do something that the screenplay never brings to fruition. Hoping that a second viewing will make the filmmakers objectives clearer is never a good sign.

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.

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.

It's a thriller, suspenseful, yet not pushy in its pace. The plot progression edges on at its own natural tempo, with piano recitals punctuating the interludes while, yes, we worry about Mika Muller (Huppert's character) - whatever might she be up to in spite of her ever so charming and outwardly friendly disposition, or is she?

In a way, it's a (light) psychological murder drama, and we kinda know the seed of evil is with Huppert's character. The trailer and the advertising synopsis suggested that obvious clue. But somehow, it didn't decrease the level of suspense. Huppert again exercises her art of subtle acting - that nonchalant facial expression that hardly flinches or betrays her suppressed inner conflicting feelings behind the mask of well-groomed outfits and demeanor.

For the most part, we follow the interaction between the other characters (good supporting cast): Mika's husband André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc) the famous pianist, the sluggish step-son Guillaume (Rodolphe Pauly) whom Polonski wants to cherish but has not the time to understand the growing teenager - whose mother, Polonski's beloved wife Lisbeth, died in a car accident years ago, and Jeanne Pollet (Anna Mouglalis) the newly introduced excitement in Polonski's life - a protégée eager to win a piano competition, and Jeanne's widowed mother Dr. Pollet (Brigitte Catillon) who heads the crime lab. Jeanne is an intelligent young woman besides being a talented pianist with potential, and we led to believe her suspicion about Mika and her serving of hot chocolate nightcaps to the Polonski's.

Chabrol's writing and directing style never thrust obvious murderous threads in front of us. There are no actual blood or acts of violence we see. Everything seems so civil. Clues are suggestive through conversational exchange between the characters and outside of the frames. That's the masterful beauty of a Claude Chabrol piece - exquisitely presented and delightful to enjoy at ease.

The notion of serving up possibly 'poisoned' hot chocolate does remind one of Hitchcock's 1941 "Suspicion" with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, including a similar driving scene yet outcome reveals off camera cleverly through a conversation.

Lately, Huppert's taken on roles that are, perhaps, psychologically in need of TLC (tender loving care): here in "Merci pour le chocolat", in Haneke's "The Piano Teacher", and in Ozon's who dunnit musical "8 Women" - she actually gets to have the most changes of outfit (3) than the other 7 actresses, besides performing her number in 'talk through' style sitting down at the piano vs. dancing around singing the song. She's having fun in portraying such characters, no doubt.

If you enjoy foreign movies, a French thriller drama with subtitles by Ian Burley (who did the wonderful translated subtitles to the Italian film "Bread and Tulips"), "Merci pour le chocolat" is for you. Enjoy!