Here's a new weekly France meme. Please join in. Grab a copy of the photo above
and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did
you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an
adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France
now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it
Maybe we can
all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.Last week my 20-year-old daughter was home from college for the week. I realized that she was missing some vital information from her education. She had never seen the movie Chocolat.
It has been a long time since I'd seen the movie and even longer since I've read the book. What I remembered about the movie was a woman and her daughter move to a French village and start a chocolate shop. I also remember Johnny Depp was especially luscious. This was still true, but I noticed so much more.
The movie opened on an empty-looking French village with gray stone buildings and cobblestone streets. People poured into a cold stone church while a woman and her little girl in red capes and hoods arrived in town along with a brisk wind. They brought change with them.
What caught my attention this time was the chocolate as it was poured from a pitcher into a cup, or as it was stirred in a big pot, or as the actors bit into each piece of chocolate. The chocolate seemed like the star of the movie -- decadent and sensual.
Juliette Binoche plays the main character Vianne. Throughout the movie, in the direst of situations, her skin looks like porcelain and she wears scooop-necked blouses that show her ivory décolletage. Her face glows with pink on the apples of her cheeks. Vianne seemed so much more alive than anyone else in the movie.And maybe because I'm older, or mabye because Johnny Depp has received so much more exposure, he didn't wow me this time in Chocolat.
I'm reading one of the sequels to Chocolat right now, Peaches for Father Francis, and I'm curious about the differences between the book Chocolat and the movie. I may need to read it again.
If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, give them a try.
