Screened as part of NZIFF 2001

Nightcap 2000

Merci pour le chocolat

Directed by Claude Chabrol

France / Switzerland In French with English subtitles
100 minutes 35mm

Director

Production Co

MK2
,
CAB Prods

Producer

Marin Karmitz

Executive Producer

Jean-Louis Porchet

Screenplay

Claude Chabrol
,
Caroline Eliacheff. Based on the novel The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong

Photography

Renato Berta

Editor

Monique Fardoulis

Production Designer

Yvan Niclass

Costume Designer

Elisabeth Tavernier

Sound

Jean-Pierre Duret
,
Claude Villand

Music

Matthieu Chabrol

Additional Music

Franz Liszt
,
Frédéric Chopin
,
Franz Schubert
,
Gustav Mahler
,
Claude Debussy
,
Alexander Scriabin

With

Isabelle Huppert (Marie-Claire "Mika" Müller)
,
Jacques Dutronc (André Polonski)
,
Anna Mouglalis (Jeanne Pollet)
,
Rodolphe Pauly (Guillaume Polonski)
,
Michel Robin (Dufreigne)
,
Mathieu Simonet (Axel)
,
Brigitte Catillon (Louise Pollet)

Elsewhere

The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie is appraised once more with uncharitable relish by Claude Chabrol, France’s veteran connoisseur of murder; the parlour game. Before we even know what the crime is, it’s clear that the star suspect is Isabelle Huppert. She’s Mika, chic, white-gloved CEO of a Swiss chocolate factory, and a committed patron of charities and artists, amongst whom her brilliant concert-pianist husband, André, takes pride of place. ‘People should not be unhappy,’ she states with a briskness that brooks no argument. The queen of inscrutability, a mesmerising Huppert makes keeping a straight face seem like a private joke which we might not wish to share. It is she who mixes the nightcaps.

Chabrol, however, is an equal-opportunity misanthrope. He provides ample evidence to attribute the worst possible motivation to virtually every other character as well.

The plot is initiated by the revelation that André’s truculent teenage son from an earlier marriage may not in fact be his son, but a boy swapped in the maternity home for a daughter! The arrival of a young woman who may or may not be that daughter provokes dangerous insecurities in all but the unheeding musical genius. He’s merely delighted that his beautiful visitor, unlike his putative son, possesses serious musical talent. (What separates factory owners from artists is as vital to this film as it is to The Taste of Others, also on our programme.)

While the air resounds with their piano virtuosity (notably Liszt’s Funérailles), other murky events from the past begin to assume new and sinister significance. Guiding us elegantly through the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, Chabrol, at 70, is supremely at ease, the mordant manipulator of our expectations and their bad behaviour. — BG

Mika may bring her stepson a Fritz Lang video as a gift, but of Chabrol’s two tutelary deities it is Hitchcock who is dominant here: in the knowingly sinister use of staircases and mirrors; the increasing sense of déjà vu that, Vertigo-like, tightens around the protagonists; above all in Isabelle Huppert’s performance as Mika, which has echoes of Ingrid Bergman’s in Notorious, or even, as she neurotically polices the family mansion, of Judith Anderson’s Mrs Danvers in Rebecca. — Keith Reader, Sight & Sound, 6/01