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These days, I'm very wary of the Miramax moniker. It's a shame that the name of a studio can stigmatize rather good movie fare. During the past couple of years, noteworthy films such as "Shakespeare in Love" and "The Cider House Rules" have garnered as much attention for their hard sell by Miramax as for their artistic merits. Those nasty Oscar campaigns have begun to distract attention from rather than to provide support for Miramax's movies.
The year 2000 was a relatively weak year for the studio, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein pinned their Oscar hopes on "Chocolat," directed by Lasse Hallstrom ("Cider House") and starring Juliette Binoche (Supporting Actress Oscar winner for "The English Patient"). What really irked me was that while "Chocolat" is a wonderfully sweet little fable, it certainly is nowhere near a quality consideration for Best Picture. Yet, there went Harvey Weinstein again, bullying everybody into nominating one of his movies for every award in sight. Not only was it annoying, it was also rather disrespectful of better films that happened to lack Miramax's campaign money.
"Chocolat" relates the tale of a mother and daughter pair, Vianne Rocher (Binoche) and Anouk (Victoire Thivisol, the immensely talented little girl in "Ponette"). They arrive at a drab little French town dominated by the town mayor, Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina). This fellow is so preoccupied with the Catholic morality of the town that he even writes the local priest's sermons to insure the proper amount of fire and brimstone to scare the townsfolk.
Vianne opens a chocolaterie, a chocolate shop, that offers its patrons the magical palliatives that they happen to need. Soon, some of the town's inhabitants are enjoying renewed sex drives, romantic courtships, and, in the case of Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin, Binoche's co-star in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"), the courage to leave her abusive husband, Serge (Peter Stormare). There are others who need Vianne's help: Armande Voizin (Judi Dench), an old woman estranged from her daughter and grandson; Caroline Claimont (Carrie-Ann Moss), the estranged daughter who might be interested in dating the repressed mayor; and Roux (Johnny Depp), a Gypsy who needs to find a nice woman like Vianne to complete his life.
Like his "Cider House Rules," Hallstrom's "Chocolat" seems to be fairly ambiguous in treating its subject matter despite taking a firm, final stance by the end of the film. Hallstrom's approach doesn't work as well here as it did in his previous work because "Chocolat" is a much lighter, fluffier film than "Cider House." "Cider House" deals with a young man's struggle to accept the necessity of offering women the choice to have safe abortions, and because of the controversy surrounding abortion, it helped to have the filmmakers not be too insistent with their pro-choice theme. Here, in "Chocolat," it simply doesn't pay for a gentle fable to take its time getting to places where the audience has already anticipated. I mean, for a film about the need for tolerance, none of the characters seem to be suffering anything that a little chocolate couldn't cure. How much more light-spirited could the film be?
Of course, Juliette Binoche, with her timeless beauty and humanity, will win over everyone's hearts. Of course, everyone will no longer be afraid to fulfill their romantic yearnings by the time the credits roll. Of course, little Anouk will grow up to realize that she no longer needs her imaginary kangaroo to comfort her.
The gentleness of "Cider House" has been carried over for this film, and the acting is uniformly warm and spirited. As usual, Juliette Binoche is just magnificent, but I think that it has more to do with how easily she can transcend normal film constraints rather than how "great" the film may be. As well made as it is, "Chocolat" simply recalls too many other movies as well as too many film-related issues. "Like Water for Chocolate", "Babette's Feast," and even the Sarah Michelle Gellar-starrer "Simply Irresistible" have covered the same territory as "Chocolat" with more warmth and humor. Besides, just because it is adapted from a novel does not automatically make "Chocolat" a superior effort due to its literary roots.
Although DreamWorks was founded a mere six years ago, its Oscar battles with Miramax have become the stuff of legend. 1999: "Saving Private Ryan" versus "Shakespeare in Love." 2000: "American Beauty" versus "The Cider House Rules." 2001: "Gladiator" versus "Chocolat." The two studios are headed for yet another collision, this time between two gangster films, if DreamWorks releases "The Road to Perdition" (Tom Hanks, directed by "American Beauty" helmer Sam Mendes) this year opposite Miramax's "The Gangs of New York" (Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Martin Scorsese). It could get ugly...again.
By all means, see "Chocolat" if you are so inclined, but please do not fall for Miramax's campaigning. Just because someone is "selling" a movie with good intentions doesn't mean that the movie is automatically the most wonderful thing on Earth. In a sense, this sort of Oscar marketing is far more pernicious than the marketing of a summer blockbuster like "Gladiator" or "Mission: Impossible 2." At the very least, a popcorn flick doesn't try to persuade viewers that it is greater than it really is, while a Miramax Oscar campaign not only gives a movie false airs, it also attempts to "de-value" the worth of other, better films.
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