Synopsis
Mika, heiress to a Swiss chocolate company, is married to celebrated pianist André and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a car wreck on his tenth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned she was almost switched with Guillaume at birth.
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Cast
- Isabelle HuppertMarie-Claire 'Mika' Muller
- Jacques DutroncAndré Polonski
- Anna MouglalisJeanne Pollet
- Rodolphe PaulyGuillaume Polonski
- Brigitte CatillonLouise Pollet
- Michel RobinDufreigne
- Mathieu SimonetAxel
- Lydia AndreiLisbeth
- Véronique AlainMadame le Maire
- Isolde BarthPauline
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Tribune
It is a movie about the gradual erosion of life's seeming certainties, and it's also about the destructive immorality that may lie beneath the most exquisitely composed veneer. As we watch "Chocolat," this great director and his great actress, Huppert, convince us: Evil is. - 90
Village Voice
Self-contained, enigmatic, illuminated from within, Huppert banks a performance that pays dividends throughout the film. - 88
New York Post
Like some of Hitchcock's films, the story - adapted from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, an American mystery writer of the '40s and '50s - can be accused of stretching credibility and coincidence almost to the breaking point. - 80
New Times (L.A.)
The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end. - 80
The A.V. Club
Chabrol handles the upended family dynamic beautifully until the final third, when a wildly implausible sequence of events lessens the suspense just as he should be turning the screws. - 80
Time
Occasionally succumbs to Mika's legato rhythms, but it is more often a sly, subtle comedy about the oh-so-gentle art of murder. - 80
Chicago Reader
Unfortunately, a conclusion stuffed with so many improbabilities that it left me gaping in disbelief. Prior to that, this is pretty much fun. - 80
L.A. Weekly
The story proceeds, by minuscule tonal shifts and barely perceptible changes in the atmospheric temperature, from touches of ghoulish comedy -- to the creepy stillness of death that pervades the house.
