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| Movies,
jerry carpenter,
02:00:00,
05 April 2001 |
Rating: F3
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Ahh, a heart-warming tale of sniffy catholic French town folk whose lives are transformed by the appearance of a beautiful mysterious lady and her lovely chocolates. Hang on, none of the Frenchies are speaking French, and very few of them a even French at all – they’re English, and Swedish, and Canadian! Thankfully there’s Juliette Binoche there, she’ll teach those pseudo-galls a trick or two. Hey, what’s this, Juliette has the weirdest accent of them all – she sounds like a bloody yank!
All very confusing, initially this seems like it could be turning into a two hour long Stella Artois ad. It’s full of the usual charicatures you’d associate with a story involving small town French folk, and the premise of the dull, strict religious Mayor rallying against the young, carefree wacky choclatraisse steers a predictable path. But it’s all so bloody mindedly charming it really wins you over, especially if you’re susceptible to sentiment and/or you find la fille Binoche the most alluring thing in the world as I always have. Even when it ups the quirk stakes by bringing in Johnny Depp as the leader of a flotilla of Irish gypsies it doesn’t spoil things.
By playing out the story as an almost timeless fairytale, complete with bedtime story narration and supernatural elements, the film excuses itself from any basis in reality – the abused wife and insulin dependant Grandmother characters only briefly touch a harder note amongst the whimsy. Binoche’s character blows in with the north wind like a Gallic Mary Poppins, and she and her daughter appear wrapped in magic red velvet cloaks, like a certain wolf-baiting hood wearer from the storybooks. And although tragedy and jollity in equal amounts in the latter stages of the film, deep down you know things aren’t really going to end up in ‘Bad Lieutenant’ territory.
I see it’s up for a few Oscars, and it might deserve one if only for Judi Dench’s touchingly bitter-sweet Grandmother, but I can’t see it winning the Best Picture because it’s probably a little too light and fluffy. But in a month that’s seen some pretty grim-faced films down at the multiplex (‘Hannibal’, ‘Enemy at the Gates’, ‘Thirteen Days’ – grim ), this is best escape from all the shit weather and bovine disease. I just wished she’d specialised in crisps, because I don’t really like chocolate that much, and it would’ve made the film much funnier.
UK rating:
12
US rating:
PG-13
Dir - Lasse Halstrom
Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Judi Dench
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