Merci pour le chocolat

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!