CHOCOLAT is a comic fable about how just one taste of life's pleasures can change a person, a relationship, a town. This is a tale of temptation, repression and the liberating powers of the senses - the comedic story of an escalating small-town war sparked by the passions and fears aroused by the arrival of a mysterious chocolate shop.
It all begins in the traditional French village of Lansquenet, where life has not changed for the last 100 years. As the North Wind blows through a seemingly tranquil town, it carries with it a traveler Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her daughter Anouk (Victoire Thivisol). Vianne is an outsider who opens a chocolaterie filled with irresistible confections that awaken the townspeople's hidden appetites. But, her magical ability to perceive the villager's private desires, and satisfy them with just the right confection, slowly persuades a few to abandon themselves to her temptations.
Soon, Vianne develops a reputation . . . and an enemy: the righteous local nobleman the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina). Reynaud is convinced that Vianne's sumptuous chocolate will wreak havoc with the town and undermine their strict code of morality. Between them, they set off a confrontation between those who would keep life the same and those who would revel in their newly discovered taste for freedom.
Along the way, Vianne has a profound effect on the village's inhabitants, including the 70 year-old libertine Armande (Dame Judi Dench) and her estranged daughter Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss); the long-suffering Josephine Muscat (Lena Olin) and her brutish husband Serge (Peter Stormare); and another unusual outsider, the riverboat traveler Roux (Johnny Depp), who awakens Vianne's own secret desire: to truly belong.
CHOCOLAT is directed by Lasse Hallström (Cider House Rules, The (1999)) and written by Robert Nelson Jacobs from the acclaimed novel by Joanne Harris. The producers are David Brown, Kit Golden and Leslie Holleran. The executive producers are Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Alan C. Blomquist and Meryl Poster. Mark Cooper is the co-producer.
