Merci pour le chocolat (2000) - film review

A piano student, Jeanne Pollet, learns that she was very nearly switched at birth with the son of a famous concert pianist, André Polonski.  Curious, she visits the Polonki household and is surprised at how warmly she is received – at least by Polonksi and his wife, Mika, who owns a chocolate factory.  Polonksi’s son Guillaume is less than enthusiastic when his father offers to coach Jeanne on her piano playing.   Jeanne becomes suspicious when Mika deliberately knocks over a flask containing hot chocolate destined for Guillaume.  She asks her boyfriend, who works in a forensic lab, to analyse some of the chocolate which was spilled on her clothes.  It turns out that the chocolate contains traces of a powerful sleeping drug.  Jeanne subsequently learns that Polanki’s previous wife died in a car accident, having fallen asleep at the wheel of her car...

After the comparative disappointment of his previous two films, Claude Chabrol more than redeems himself with this chilling, multi-layered suspense thriller.  Crafted with the sophistication, analytical precision and sheer style of Hitchock’s better works, Merci pour le chocolat takes us back to the taut, fragile and slightly sinister world of the secluded Bourgeois family seen in La Cérémonie (1995).  These two films have a great deal in common, and with Chabrol’s 2003 film La Fleur du mal, they form a curiously cohesive trilogy, linked by a common theme.

Chabrol would appear to have something of a morbid obsession with the Bourgeois milieu.  Time and again in his films, the veneer of middleclass respectability is pared back to reveal something nasty, a beautiful but deadly flower growing in a well-kept garden.    The poisonous plant which features in Merci pour le chocolat is a particularly nasty piece of work – perhaps the most venomous in any of Chabrol’s films.  Mika Muller – played by Isabelle Huppert – is as good as she is evil; her apparent kindness rendering her malice all the more sickening and inexplicable.

What makes the Mika Muller character appear so terrible is that the extent of her depravity is only revealed right at the end of the film.  Although she is clearly a manipulative individual, her behaviour throughout most of the film appears to be motivated by good intent.  It comes as a shock to find that she is the complete opposite.  Like the chocolate she manufactures, she brings only an illusion of goodness.  Beyond the illusion, there is something truly horrific: a vicious child who has never managed to grow up, and who is incapable of judging her thoughts or her actions.  With no moral principles, she is capable of anything.

One thing which the film doesn’t really make clear is Mika’s motivation for wanting to kill a second time.  Her behaviour appears either completely malicious or totally arbitrary.  A possible explanation is offered in La Fleur du mal, where the connection with La Cérémonie also becomes apparent.  Watching Merci pour le chocolat a second time, after having seen the complete trilogy, one’s view of Mika seems to have changed considerably.

In addition to being one of Chabrol’s most disturbing films, Merci pour le chocolat is also one of his most technically accomplished.  Throughout, the film reflects Chabrol’s vast experience as a film maker, which now extends to over 50 films in a career stretching back forty years.  The suspense thriller is a genre he clearly feels comfortable with and shows complete mastery of.  In an interview, he stated that he was applying techniques which Hitchcock used even without realising it.  The proof is that this film is one of his most atmospheric and suspense-laden, although it appears superficially much simpler than many of his earlier thrillers.

One device which Chabrol uses to great effect here is music to emphasise and, more often, to precede dramatic developments.  Music plays a particular importance in this film, perhaps more so than in any previous Chabrol thriller.  The two of the main characters (Polanski and Jeanne) are united by their love of music, and this forms an intangible but very real barrier against the other two characters (Guillaume and Mika).  It is the music – particularly the strident funeral compositions – which largely creates the mood of the film, suggesting tensions and dangerously repressed emotions.

No one but Isabelle Huppert could have played the deliciously complex Mika.  Despite Chabrol’s statements to the contrary, he very probably did have this actress in mind for the part from the outset, because she is just so perfectly qualified to take it on.  The character fits neatly into the growing repertoire of repressed, disconnected middle-aged females which Huppert exceeds in, and the actress certainly gives one of her best performances.  Even in the less successful Madame Bovary and Rien ne va plus Huppert is stunning, and it is an immense pleasure to see her perform so well in a film which is worthy of her talent, such as Merci pour le chocolat.

Credit must also go to Jacques Dutronc, who plays Mika’s pianist husband.  Although Dutronc has enjoyed greater success as a singer than an actor, his performance in this film is one to be savoured.  You really do feel that he has been a concert pianist all his life.   Also, his dark, introspective personality suits the tone of the film perfectly.

In summary, Merci pour le chocolat is classic Chabrol.  Directed with the flair of a true master of the thriller genre, it paints a terrifying portrait of festering perversion within a seemingly benign environment.  That evil should be introduced to us with a veil of smiling goodness makes it a particularly chilling examination of the psychology of a killer.  It’s enough to put you off your chocolate for life...

© James Travers 2003

The Judgement Trilogy:
1. La Cérémonie
2. Merci pour le chocolat
3. La Fleur du mal

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