It goes without saying in such stories that organized religion is the province of prudes and hypocrites, but actually "Chocolat" is fairly easy on the local establishment-they're not evil people, although they resent outsiders like the Depp character they're more like tranquil sleepwalkers who wake up to smell the coffee, or in this case, the chocolate.
LENA OLIN CHOCOLAT MOVIE
It's the sort of movie you can enjoy as a superior fable, in which the values come from children's fairy tales but adult themes have been introduced. "Chocolat" was directed by Lasse Hallstrom (" The Cider House Rules," " What's Eating Gilbert Grape," "My Life as a Dog"). Even Armande ( Judi Dench), Vianne's opinionated old landlady, melts under the influence and ends her long hostility to her daughter ( Carrie-Anne Moss). One confection seems to work like Viagra, while others inspire love, not lust, and inspire an old man ( John Wood) to screw up his courage and confess to a local widow ( Leslie Caron) that he has adored her forever. Vianne's chocolates contain magic ingredients like the foods in "Like Water for Chocolate," and soon her shop is a local healing center. She does, however, have an interest in the opposite sex, represented by Roux ( Johnny Depp), who anchors his houseboat in the nearby river and shocks the bourgeoisie with his communal lifestyle. It is a convention in such stories that husbands tend toward wife-beating, and a quiet argument is made for the superior state of Vianne, who is the unmarried mother of Anouk ( Victoire Thivisol), and thus harbors no potential brute beneath her roof. There are troubles in the town, quickly confided to Vianne, who consoles Josephine ( Lena Olin) after she is beaten by her husband Serge ( Peter Stormare). Reynaud styles himself as the local arbiter of morals, even writing the sermons which Father Henri ( Hugh O'Conor) delivers from the pulpit while the complacent aristocrat's lips move contentedly in unison. The town is ruled by Comte de Reynaud ( Alfred Molina), whose wealth and books do not console him for the absence of his wife, who is allegedly visiting Venice, but may just have packed up and moved out.
Whether her character has deeper agendas, whether she is indeed a witch, as some believe, or a pagan priestess, as she seems to hint, is left unresolved by the movie-but anyone who schedules a fertility celebration up against Easter Sunday is clearly picking a fight. Like Catherine Deneuve's, her beauty is not only that of youth, but will carry her through life, and here she looks so ripe and wholesome that her very presence is an argument against the local prudes. Her role as an actress who infuriates her director by getting pregnant while working on one of August Strindberg's plays prefigured actual events when her own pregnancy would complicate a Bergman production of Strindberg's "A Dream Play.The movie is charming and whimsical, and Binoche reigns as a serene and wise goddess.
In "After the Rehearsal" (1984), she played Anna, a character written expressly for her. She went on to appear in "The Adventures of Picasso" (1978) and acted for Bergman in "Fanny and Alexander" (1982). The child of actors-her father, Stig Olin, appeared in Bergman films during the 1940s and 50s-she gravitated to the profession in an attempt to overcome her crippling shyness, and though she failed her first audition for the Royal Dramatic Theater school, Bergman saw enough to cast her in a small role in his "Face to Face" (1976). A powerful and beautiful Swedish actress in the tradition of Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, Lena Olin first came to prominence in Sweden as a "Bergman actress," working in plays and films directed by the great Ingmar Bergman.
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