I also wanted to write about people, and about how the arrival of a single individual can affect the internal politics of a community. I wanted to write a book about that conflict between indulgence and guilt, with chocolate as the central metaphor.
#Chocolat filmi full#
The shops are never so full of temptations as they are at Easter. And it’s ironic, too, that we should have come full circle. The pagan traditions which still survive all prove it.
Originally Easter was a time of feasting and celebration and the rebirth of Spring. It seems very strange to me that Easter should now be so closely linked with fasting and self-denial. The Catholic church, of course, still so influential in French communities.
#Chocolat filmi windows#
Easter to me has many memories and associations, all of them French elaborate carnivals, egg-hunts in my great-grandmother’s garden, the story about the flying bells, the exquisite displays in the windows of the confiseries and pâtisseries.
I first planned out this story during the Easter holidays, and so it seemed natural to me that I should set it at that time. Vianne’s belief in magic also belongs to her, as do many of her recipes. Armande’s red petticoats belong to her, as does the manner of Armande’s death, her refusal to conform and her impudent zest for life.
Denounced from the local pulpit for daring to send her son to a secular school rather than a fee-paying Catholic one, she was the template for both Vianne and Armande, and her picture is on the back cover of the book, just as I remember her, in her garden with her milk-jug in one hand. My great-grandmother, especially, to whom the book is dedicated, is a strong influence, being at the same time a wonderful cook, a powerful matriarchal figure as well as being (as I remember her best) a lively, eccentric and generous Mémée. That started me thinking about my own mother and the members of my family, in France and elsewhere, and that’s why so many of them are depicted in this book. I like to think that was what began it for the first time I felt ready to write like a mother, to try and express some of what it felt like to me. She is one of the main characters in the story, as is her imaginary rabbit, Pantoufle. My daughter was three when I wrote Chocolat. Both factions have a great deal at stake the village is bitterly divided and as the big day looms closer their struggle becomes much more than a conflict between church and chocolate – it becomes an exorcism of the past, a declaration of independence, a showdown between dogma and understanding, pleasure and self-denial. As Easter approaches, both parties throw themselves whole-heartedly into the preparations Vianne for the chocolate festival she plans to hold on Easter Sunday, Reynaud into a desperate attempt to win back his straying flock. Under Vianne’s influence an old woman embraces a new life, a battered wife finds the courage to leave her husband, children rebel against authority, outcasts and strays are welcomed… and Reynaud’s tight and carefully ordered community is in danger of breaking apart. When he realizes that Vianne intends to open a chocolate shop in place of the old bakery, thereby tempting the churchgoers to over-indulgence, Reynaud’s disapproval increases.Īs it becomes clear that the villagers of Lansquenet are falling under the spell of Vianne’s easy ways and unorthodox opinions, to the detriment of his own authority, he is quick to see her as a danger. As the inhabitants of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes clear away the remains of the carnival which heralds the beginning of Lent, Vianne moves with her daughter into a disused bakery facing the church, where Francis Reynaud, the young and opinionated curé of the parish, watches her arrival with disapproval and suspicion. Chocolat begins with the arrival in a tiny French village of Vianne Rocher, a single mother with a young daughter, on Shrove Tuesday.
0 kommentar(er)
