Chocolat - the movie?
 

Just saw it on video. Was Depp's character supposed to be a Rom, or is/was there a river culture in France??

Depp's character was an Irishman who left his country to sail around Europe. <BR>BC

I missed that fact, but I did note what I thought was an Irish accent (but it kind of came and went, making me question whether it was just his acting).

Then who were the people on that boat he was on that had the party? Irish?

The other guys on Depp's boat were from Ireland & a couple of other European countries he'd sailed to, prior to his encounter with the community where Juliet Binoche's character resided. <BR>BC

Book Chick: Thanks for the info. Here's another question if you can: Was Juliet in The Unbearable Lightness of Being as the young wife?

Yes, she & co-star Lena Olin were in both films. <BR> <BR>BC (apparently also FC for film chick)

But here's the important question, Curious: Did you enjoy Chocolat? <BR> <BR>My 12 year old niece and I came away from it feeling very uplifted. She was so cute--she held her hand to her chest and exclaimed, "Oh, it made me feel so...good!"

The short answer is "yes". I enjoyed it. However, I was haunted by how it reminded me of other "foreign" or foreign-local movies I have seen (but which I couldn't put my finger on. Now that Book Chick has clarified that both actresses were from Unbearable, this explained that familiarity. However, the general theme seemed familiar, too, but I can't name the movie(s) that it reminded me of. Also, for some reason, I didn't find the Depp character quite right (but that may have been my confusion about who/what nationality he was supposed to be).

Just an passing opinion not a slam. I thought the movie painted a very idealized version of Europe. I thought it was a movie made for tourist who have never been but dream of Europe. Did you get a load of that chocolate shop before and after. Before it's a dark dusty room suffering from years of neglect after it's a counter straight off Madison avenue. Give me a break that marble table top appeared out of nowhere. Hollywood has been blocking realistic European movies from American viewers for years. When the demand grows beyond there control they create movies like chocolat.

I think the intended audience was 12 year old girls. It was so cliche. But who asked me?

It was an attempt at magical realism as was a far better example, Like Water For Chocolate. I was somewhat disappointed however that Chocolat was not in French.

I was also disappointed that the film was in English rather than French. I'm also glad that I'm not the only one who couldn't place Johnny Depp's accent and didn't realize that he was Irish. I thought that he and the others on the river were intended to be gypsies.

The book is a bit different from the film, so if you haven't read it, you might want to give it a try. (I'd read it by the time the film had been released.) Despite the fact there is definitely the same degree of conflict in film & book (beautifully & quasi-magically resolved by the end of both), some things about the characters are different in the book. (I feel they kind of made things more "convenient" for the purposes of the film.) Frankly, in the film, I felt that Alfred Molina as the "villian" of a town's mayor pretty much stole the movie from the other actors in it. The scene in which Viane (Juliet Binoche) has to awaken him on Easter morning was fabulous! <BR>BC

I would have been surprised if the film had been in French. It's based on a novel written in English and it wasn't a French production. A Tale of Two Cities wasn't in French, For Whom the Bell Tolls wasn't in Spanish, Ben Hur wasn't in Latin :-)

mjs, <BR>Right! "Chocolat" author, Joanne Harris lives in the UK, and is the daughter of a British father & a French mother. Her memories of food, cooking, and life in France during trips to visit her mother's family influenced her writing again in "Five Quarters of the Orange", published in the spring of this year. I would recommend "Five Quarters" very much; a good read told in a kind of flashback, taking place again in France. <BR>BC

<BR>Although a Miramax film, it is a Lasee Hallstrom production. I kind of like the german site to the movie: <BR>http://www.chocolat-derfilm.de/ <BR> <BR>But I still would have preferred hearing Julet Binoche speak in French. Johnny Depp...well, that's another issue. It would have had to be recast, and by then it would be a different (better?) movie. For a compendium of reviews, you might enjoy http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movie-1103080/ <BR> <BR>I'll have to read the book, love the genre.