Merci Pour Le Chocolat is Claude Chabrol's 53rd film. It's a beguiling,
understated thriller centred on the Swiss bourgeois family of famous
pianist Polonski (Jacques Dutronc), recently remarried to his first
wife, chocolate heiress (Isabelle Huppert). When Polonski meets
piano prodigy Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), born on the same day and in the
same hospital as his son, a medical mix-up is suggested. And exactly how
did Polonski's second wife die? Chabrol's teasing use of doubling and
deja vu motifs, and the suggestion of repressed urges and compulsions
simmering beneath the characters' imperturbable facades, create an
atmosphere of quietly enigmatic elusiveness.
