Sweet and sour

>> Huppert spikes Chabrol's Merci pour le chocolat

by MATTHEW HAYS

Claude Chabrol manages to be both arthouse director and Hitchcock enthusiast with his latest film. Merci pour le chocolat (going under the English translation title Nightcap) is an oddly engaging tale involving young adults who may or may not have been switched at birth.

A beautiful young woman (Anna Mouglalis) soon has grave suspicions about her lineage when her mother reluctantly reveals that there was some confusion between her and another baby at birth. A fight ensued after Mouglalis was born, and a famous pianist was convinced, however briefly, that his wife had given birth to a daughter and not the son they ended up with. Things wouldn't be quite so weird for this Mouglalis, except that she is studying classical piano, and thus feels this famous musician's vocation is a clue to her genetic disposition. Is he her real father? Was she switched at birth? If the children were mixed up, then hospital workers are even worse than we suspected--how could the sex of a newborn not be noted at birth? This last question is never really pondered by the characters but, this being an arty French film, best not to argue with the plot's internal logic.

But as the two rather confused family units come to be friendly socially, the young daughter becomes suspicious of her potential father's new wife (played by Chabrol favourite Isabelle Huppert) and the film takes a sharp turn. Mouglalis is convinced that Huppert, the heiress of a famous chocolate company, poisoned the pianist's first wife (who, it was thought up till this point, almost certainly committed suicide).

Such confusing family relations. And such a mystery, though I must say, whether or not Huppert actually dunnit didn't add up to a mystery to me, though I couldn't quite tell if that was due to the intentional organicness of the screenplay, or because of my own personal bias. I interviewed Huppert a couple of years back while she was promoting another film and found her to be such an unpleasant, prickly sourpuss, it only seemed logical to me that she would turn out to be a cold, calculating murderess.

I still find Chabrol's undeniably fascinating mélange of styles a mystery. I suspect he did intend for us to suspect Huppert's nasty streak from the get-go. It's part of the film's strength that knowing that doesn't take away from its impact.

Merci pour le chocolat (Nightcap) opens Friday, Feb. 2