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Merci Pour le Chocolat (2000)

tomatometer

84

Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 51
Fresh: 43 | Rotten: 8

Boasting a masterful performance by Huppert, Merci Pour Le Chocolat is a suspenseful psychological thriller.

94

Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 1

Boasting a masterful performance by Huppert, Merci Pour Le Chocolat is a suspenseful psychological thriller.

audience

64

liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 2,696

My Rating

Movie Info

Claude Chabrol directed this well-crafted thriller, which recalls the style and themes of his best-known work of the 1960s. Marie-Claire "Mika" Muller (Isabelle Huppert), who has inherited control of a large and successful Swiss chocolate company, remarries well-known musician André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc), to whom she was briefly wed 18 years ago. After their divorce, André married a woman named Lisabeth and they had a son, Guillaume (Rodolphe Pauly), whom André was left to raise alone after

Apr 22, 2003

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All Critics (60) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (9) | DVD (4)

We can rejoice that he carries on, breathes his profession as his native air, makes pictures of varying quality but persistently makes them.

March 5, 2013 Full Review Source: The New Republic
The New Republic
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A tasty appetizer that leaves you wanting more.

November 29, 2002 Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News
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An elegant, exquisitely modulated psychological thriller.

November 8, 2002
Detroit News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

It's enough to watch Huppert scheming, with her small, intelligent eyes as steady as any noir villain, and to enjoy the perfectly pitched web of tension that Chabrol spins.

October 18, 2002 Full Review Source: Seattle Times
Seattle Times
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Merci Pour le Chocolat has a restraint and rigor that we don't see in commercial American films, the kind that a director creates when he has no interest in sentimentality or in soliciting the audience's favor.

October 18, 2002 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A sun-drenched masterpiece, part parlor game, part psychological case study, part droll social satire.

October 17, 2002 Full Review Source: San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Predictable? Maybe, but for artists like these the motivation is always more important than the act itself.

May 5, 2010 Full Review Source: East Bay Express
East Bay Express

The ensemble cast all sparkled.

August 13, 2003 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

A disappointing DVD treatment for Claude Chabrol's must-see psychological thriller.

April 21, 2003 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine

Weighty and ponderous but every bit as filling as the treat of the title.

March 26, 2003 Full Review Source: RTE Interactive (Dublin, Ireland)

Huppert's show to steal and she makes a meal of it, channeling Kathy Baker's creepy turn as the repressed mother on Boston Public as much as 8 Women's Augustine.

February 7, 2003
Planet Sick-Boy

A fascinating piece...assured and frequently witty.

December 2, 2002 Full Review Source: One Guy's Opinion
One Guy's Opinion

The big finish is a bit like getting all excited about a chocolate eclair and then biting into it and finding the filling missing.

November 29, 2002 Full Review Source: TheMovieChicks.com

Hitch would enjoy the way Chabrol plays with the audience (including the expertly interwoven Lizt requiem)

October 29, 2002 Full Review Source: ToxicUniverse.com
ToxicUniverse.com

Like being invited to a classy dinner soiree and not knowing anyone. You leave the same way you came -- a few tasty morsels under your belt, but no new friends.

October 24, 2002 Full Review Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Credit Huppert as much as Chabrol for the film's success.

October 21, 2002 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid
Combustible Celluloid

Audience Reviews for Merci Pour le Chocolat

[font=Century Gothic][color=red]Watching a Claude Chabrol film is like walking along, looking up at the sky for UFO's while not seeing the wall, that you're about to walk into. Chabrol's films are refreshingly straight-forward which can work very well in a film like "This Man Must Die" but can also backfire like it did in "Flower of Evil" where everything that is ever going to happen to the characters is revealed in the first ten minutes; the next eighty minutes is just a complete waste.[/color][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000]Another film, that he directed, "Merci Pour Le Chocolat" starts out with a wedding of two middle aged people - concert pianist, Andre Polonski and chocolate factory owner Mika Muller. Then, we shift to a story being told to a young concert pianist, Jeanne Pollet, about a near mixup at the hospital when she was born between her and the Polonskis' baby. Jeanne imagines herself as Polonski's daughter. Oh, and Polonski's first wife died, falling asleep at the wheel of the car...So, what transpires is a thoughtful rumination on family and genetics that ends on a suspenseful note. [/color][/font][font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000]Note: at the wedding, one of the characters mentions that Polonski is a great pianist but not a great human being.(It is true that the only thing that interests Polonski is playing the piano which forges a quick bond between him and Jeanne.) Which got me thinking about whether or not any resemblence between the fictional Polonski and the real life Roman Polanski was intended.[/color][/font]
February 16, 2005
Harlequin68
Walter M.

Super Reviewer

A somewhat average thriller from Chabrol. It starts out well enough, but losses it towards the end and ultimately leaves too many questions unanswered. However despite it's weaknesses it's always worthwhile watching Huppert and at least you get to listen to Liszt's 'Funerailles' pretty much throughout the film.
January 16, 2009
littlecharmer1959
Emily B.

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • Süßes Gift (DE)
  • Nightcap (Merci Pour le Chocolat) (UK)
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