MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT
"... a light confection with a tasty Isabelle Huppert performance
at its center...Chabrol knocks off a witty psychological thriller--more
gothic than noir...'Merci is filled with peculiar characters and sharply
drawn physical types." --J.
Hoberman, The Village Voice
"Mr. Chabrol's droll assault on petit-bourgeois security feels like
a satire of 'Ordinary People' directed by Alfred Hitchcock...Mr. Chabrol
uses the somnolent performance by Ms. Huppert--which, frankly, doesn't
differ from many of her others--for a note of sober inscrutability.
She's a cast-iron waif, and her detachment lends itself to her seemingly
blithe efficiency...the audience may find itself playing the game
that Mr. Chabrol inspires more than any other European director: Who'll
star in the eventual, and probably inevitably overscale, American
remake?" --Elvis Mitchell, The New
York Times
"Not since Cary Grant offered Joan Fontaine a gleaming glass of milk
has a bedtime toddy looked as suspicious as it does in Claude Chabrol's
wittily enigmatic 'Merci Pour le Chocolat'...Huppert's ability to
make the internal external is breathtaking...The thrill is in watching,
through mirrors and mirrored picture frames, as Mika's poisonous nature
begins to seep out."--Jami Bernard,
The New York Daily News
"Claude Chabrol, who has been referred to as the Alfred Hitchcock
of France since the 1960s, serves up one of his most diabolical and
intricate thrillers...Like some of Hitchcock's films, the story can
be accused of stretching credibility and coincidence almost to the
breaking point...But Chabrol ratchets up such a level of suspense--and
Huppert gives such a mesmerizingly deadpan performance--that 'Merci
Pour le Chocolat' turns out to be as irresistible as a piece of dark
chocolate." --Lou Lumenick, The New
York Post
"Huppert is the whip-wielding dominatrix of emotional control, and
of the oxymoronic technique--the hysterical silence, the venomous
caress. Teamed with Claude Chabrol, still the most accessible, consistent
and hard-working remnant of France's '50s Nouvelle Vague, as well
as the closest thing we have to Hitchcock, they create an otherworldy
magic..." --John Anderson, Newsday
"Much is suspected, but almost nothing is confronted until the end
of the film, which concludes with one character in a fetal position
and the other in a bizarre state of moral detachment...This is one
of Mr. Chabrol's subtlest works, but also one of his most uncanny.
Along with Eric Rohmer, he remains a glorious survivor of the Cahier-ist
nouvelle vague, and an artist still in the hunt." --Andrew
Sarris, The New York Observer
|
|
