‘Chocolat’s’ Juliette Binoche sweetens fine film

In theaters

CHOCOLAT. 121 minutes, PG-13, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, written by Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on the novel by Joanne Harris.

The new Lasse Hallstrom film, “Chocolat,” nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress for Dame Judi Dench and Best Actress for Juliette Binoche, the film’s star, will remind some of Alfonso Arau’s 1992 film, “Like Water for Chocolate” – it’s a rich, charming fable that stands as a testament to the amorous powers of the cocoa bean.

The film, adapted by Robert Nelson from Joanne Harris’ novel, is light but it lingers. Much like “Babette’s Feast,” the famous eating scene in “Tom Jones” or the recent romantic comedy “Woman on Top,” it’s a celebration of our relationship with food. It knows there’s a fine line between food, sex and love – and it has a great, mischievous time exploring just how fine that line is.

The film also has other ideas in mind – namely, an all-out war between pagans and Christians. Set in the 1950s, it stars Binoche as Vianne, a gorgeous, single woman with a young daughter (Victoire Thivisol) who moves into the uptight, pious French town of Lansquenet.

Draped in shimmering red cloaks, these two pagan Red Riding Hoods quickly find themselves surrounded by a town filled with Christian wolves. Indeed, the townspeople of Lansquenet may be repressed, as their dowdy black garb and long, drawn faces suggest, but their bite can be ferocious and, in some cases, eager to do damage.

Undeterred, Vianne, who wears short, colorful dresses with plunging necklines, chooses Lent – of all times – to open a chocolate shop right across from the town church. Within a matter of days, she’s filled her windows with confections so inviting and sinful, they’re bound to cause trouble.

And they do. Once the town’s impossibly abstemious mayor, Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), decides this woman and her chocolate pies need to go, he starts rallying the troops – not to mention the local clergy – to rid her from Lansquenet.

But will Reynaud’s hatemongering and Bible thumping be enough to frighten a town eager to be liberated with Vianne’s special mix of chocolate and hot peppers, some of which have the power to give certain men a lift in the bedroom, and others that give one woman (Lena Olin) the courage to leave an abusive marriage? The film answers with style, humor and a handful of genuine surprises.

As good as “Chocolat” is, it doesn’t deserve its nomination for Best Picture – Harvey Weinstein, head of the film’s studio, Miramax, secured that little pocket of gold with another one of his savvy marketing campaigns. “Almost Famous,” a better film, is more deserving.

Likewise, Dench’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress should have gone to someone else – preferably to Michelle Yeoh, who gives one of the most subtle, adult performances of the year in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Dench, who seems to be collecting more than her share of Academy Award nominations ever since the Academy blew it by not giving her one for her work in “Mrs. Brown,” is in fine form as Vianne’s crabby old landlady, a woman who literally puts the wrinkle in her uptight daughter’s (Carrie-Ann Moss) nose. But nothing she does here is special or worthy of an Oscar nod. Instead, her nomination feels as if it were fueled by guilt.

Juliette Binoche, on the other hand, is absolutely deserving of her nomination. As Vianne, Binoche, a real movie star, is superb, grounding a movie that easily could have become too light without her steadying hand – and old-school glamour.

Grade: A-

On video and DVD

BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2. 90 minutes, R, directed by Joe Berlinger, written by Dick Beebe and Berlinger.

If ever there was a time I’d encourage the burning of a book, it’s with Joe Berlinger’s “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch II,” the self-aware, self-important, muddled sequel to 1999’s surprise hit, “The Blair Witch Project.”

It’s terrible – a pretentious piece of marketing gone bad that claims to be a horror movie, but isn’t. Indeed, the only thing here that’s frightening is the fact that the filmmakers couldn’t improve on the mediocre original, which looks like cinematic gold next to this cold bucket of dirt.

What begins as a humorous documentary about the original film’s impact on audiences and, by extension, its considerable influence on pop culture, quickly becomes something altogether different and less appealing – a noisy, gimmicky slasher flick filled with unlikable characters who never connect with us or with the thin material.

Worse, “Shadows” misses what gave the original film its crazed moments of energy – the dark. Instead of allowing audiences to use their imagination, as the original did, “Book of Shadows” makes the fatal mistake of pulling a “Hannibal” and showing everything. Time and again, director Berlinger shines a spotlight on the guts and gristle of his over-the-top gore. The result? A film that spills more fake blood than a Hammer movie.

I hated “Book of Shadows.” Hated it. It made my skin crawl off my body and slide down the street. Somehow, Berlinger, who made the excellent documentaries “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” and “Paradise Lost 2: Revelations,” both of which focused on several real-life murders, has cranked out a film that looks and feels like every other teen slasher going.

His characters are interchangeable twentysomething caricatures; with the exception of Kim (Kim Director), a cheap, humorless knockoff of Elvira, everyone in “Shadows” could have walked in from any number of today’s horror movies – “Valentine,” “Urban Legends: Final Cut,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the “Scream” series.

Boring, angry and shrill, these moronic slackers are supposed to represent a generation, but all they represent is Hollywood’s idea of a generation. Since we never come to care for them, we don’t care what happens to them as they plunge into the woods to allegedly learn more about the infamous Blair Witch.

But don’t expect any answers; “Book of Shadows,” which has nothing to do with a book of shadows, isn’t interested in providing any. It is, in fact, hard to say just what the film is interested in, though there’s little question that it wants to be much more than Berlinger can deliver.

Some might call that ambitious. I call it a waste of time.

Grade: F

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style, Thursdays in the scene, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6.