Entry 7

The film Chocolat is about a woman named Vianne and her daughter Anouk who are nomadic and help people along the way. The film takes place in a small village in France where Vianne and her daughter have stopped to open up a chocolate shop. They are initially met with resistance from the town but over time people come to love her chocolate and enjoy having her there. The process in which Vianne gets the small town to enjoy pleasures such as chocolate and become more open reveal a lot about chocolate’s role as a medicine in the film and even reveal a little bit of information about French culture. 

One thing I learned about French culture is that the government is supposed to be secularized. The movie shows us how the major, who has a lot of control over town, is involved in both politics and religion despite the secularization. I also learned that in Europe pharmacies are privately owned so most places only have one every few miles, and in this movie Vianne’s chocolate shop is like the town’s pharmacy. 

Chocolate plays a big role in the movie as a medicine. It is first seen as a sort of medicine when Vianne’s father, in search of natural medicine, drinks unrefined cocoa. After its introduction as a medicine, chocolate is used by Vianne to heal the citizens of the town in various ways. The first person we see getting healed by the chocolate is a lady whose husband doesn’t have much passion left in him, the chocolate makes her husband more passionate and they often come back to buy more chocolate. Another person is Josephine, who goes through the process of becoming a stronger and more independent woman, away from her abusive husband by learning how to make the chocolate with Vianne. One more person who was healed by the chocolate is the major. The major spent most of the movie trying to get rid of Vianne but at the end he indulges himself on the chocolate and then becomes a better man, even gaining the confidence to tell the woman he loves how he feels.