Le goût du sang

The Matrix has a lot to answer for. Post Matrix every vampire or werewolf movie (Van Helseign, Underworld, Blade) seems to involve copious amounts of special effects, Martial arts and the main character decisions being whether they kill the bad guy with a gun, sword, falling building, poison that makes people explode, or giant stake improvised from the radio antenna on top of the Empire State building.

Blood and Chocolate follows the traditions oh movies from the 1980s (The hunger, Wolf, Cat people and even The Lost Boys).

Characters are not fighting over whether to enslave the human race (if vampires planned to enslave the human race, wouldn't it be easier to let everyone know, and 1.3 Billion people versus a few thousand vampires or werewolves will be a very short battle indeed).

Blood and Chocolate tells the story of a teenage werewolf who wants to escape what she is being told she should be and a young American writer/artist who has already escaped from his domineering ex-ranger father).

In this story, werewolves are blessed, not cursed, they are the best of man and the best of beast. Though perhaps that is what they should be, and some of them are the worst of both.

This is a human story at the human level. Some of the characters merely tend to turn into wolves. The movie is more about mood and excitement and action. The action is realistic, not modern son of Honk-Kong martial arts over the top stuff. I loved it, even though I also love the modern effects driven movies. In fact the special effects are so bad, it is likely that was a conscious choice (I think the transformation is a homage to Cat People).

If you like this movie, check out the old stuff from the 80s.

This movie is actually very good for the first 20 minutes or so. The director is mechanical (German, you know) but the introductory parts are stylish. After that, this becomes something barely worthy of after school teen fodder.

These things often depend on the fact of dual identities, and stories are based on problems coming from that dual identity. This is no different: girl-wolf falls in love with regular boy. There's some irrelevant business about the leader of the pack. Ho hum. Do we ever doubt the outcome? They often also depend on the actual cinematic magic of transformation. But what we have here is about 70 years behind in special effects.

What brought me to this was the rather delicious notion of the two fluids. Our haunted teen girl works in a chocolate shop. I don't know the book makes of this. It has amazing cinematic promise. But the film includes her chocolate job only in a cursory way. The supposed sex appeal is so lacking in sex, even that's gone.

This director sits as a judge for the Berlin film festival? Wow.

There is an interesting character, that appears in only a few scenes and has no lines. The deal is that leader of the pack remarries every seven years. The main women characters are the wife before the current one, and our teen girl who is the designated next one. Some of the scant story is in the tension between these two. One woman abandoned and the second one an unwilling bride. The interesting one is the inbetween one.

I'm interested in films that feature Absinthe. This is one. The werewolves drink it ("some people think its poison") and later are literally burned by it. Usually when it appears as it does here, everything afterward could be considered a hallucination. It could be here, but the filmmaker surely did not intent that ambiguity.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I haven't read the book so this is a commentary on the movie by itself as a movie. For some reason I was expecting this movie to be darker, edgier, perhaps even a horror movie. The PG-13 rating didn't phase me as so many horror movies are coming out now with PG-13 rating. But this one borders on PG on it good-heartedness and gentleness. It's not particularly entertaining since there's not much drama in the movie, not much to look forward to. The main character is too reserved and withdrawn to be particularly interesting. The main bad guy is hard to understand because of his thick accent. There's some ambivalence here on the good/bad dichotomy as the werewolves aren't really bad by nature, they're just trying to blend in and protect themselves, so you can't dislike them all that much. Plus it's hard to dislike wolves. My concern here that the wolves may have been harmed during filming. At the end of the movie there is no disclaimer that no animal was harmed, instead there's something to the effect that efforts were made avoid injury, which isn't quite the same. The love story didn't convince me all that much. Does it always have to be the American tourist? On the positive side, I like the fact that this was filmed in Bucharest, it sure looks like an interesting city so there are some great sights here. The mythology behind the story is good too. I like the special effects and the transformations. They look very unique. And something can be said for a movie that's not as malevolent as most movies. This is a good film for teens.

I enjoyed this film. It isn't life changing, deep or even particularly thought provoking, but it does draw you in and keep you 'entertained' throughout.

Many of the comments below extol the book and damn the film, you'd think they would know better to expect a fairly run of the mill film to outshine the fiction it was based on. I haven't read the book but I may now.

The story is compassionate and attempts to re-consider the wolf-person theme by treating them as an oppressed minority, I couldn't help but think that they were a metaphor for the Roma, a thought that bears scrutiny I think.

The cinematography was atmospheric and Bucharest became the star, lots of beautiful rococo buildings and a pleasantly eastern soundtrack. I kept wondering if the film wasn't a Hollywood offering because the characters all seem normal and manage to avoid behaving in the usual American manner (not an "oh my god" in earshot), but no, the ending isn't European.

I was really pleasantly surprised with the beautiful human to wolf transitions, the makers restrained themselves from fx to the benefit of the film, it reminded me of the early eastern European fairytale films (the singing ringing tree). Don't be concerned about gore or substance abuse as mentioned below, there is little more blood than a few cut fingers and bloodstained clothing, and the only substance that gets abused is absinthe (which may well be an illegal substance in your country as it is here), it gets drunk sparingly, injected once and burnt fairly often. See this film.

I gave this movie a 5 rating, because it deserves it. The sets were beautiful, but lets be honest, especially us Romanians. We know what Bucharest is like, and you really have to look deep to find that sort of inner beauty. At time it resembles that city from the movie, but normally Bucharest, is not as romantic as the movie portrays it.

I enjoyed the movie, but was very disappointed by how it ends, very sudden. The ending didn't fit the storyline, not one bit. The acting was mediocre, but acceptable. Another user described Viviane as robotic, this word pops in my mind as well. The movie, is not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed that description of Bucharest, which most of the time, eludes us.