Lycanthropy For Beginners (Blood And Chocolate (DVD))

Member Name: spencer_hawken

Product:	Blood And Chocolate (DVD)
Date:	19/12/07 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engaging werewolf tale that forgets the horror trappings

Disadvantages: Poor looking film stock

As a child Vivian witnessed the hunters come, before her very eyes she saw her parents die. Now as a young woman Vivian (Agnes Bruckner) lives with her aunt Astrid in Romania, where they run a hugely successful chocolate shop. Vivian is sadly in wait, waiting for the day that Gabriel (Oliver Martinez) will return; for Vivian is promised to him for saving her as a child from certain fate. But being promised to someone is no real pleasure and a chance encounter in a church late at night with Aiden (Hugh Dancy) shows Vivian that there are possibilities for love outside of promised marriage.

If only life were this simple, this is not just a tale of love; it's the telling of a legend. For Vivian is not just an ordinary woman with love dilemmas, indeed she is something very different indeed; she is in fact the future for a race considered only to myth. As Gabriel refuses to just let Vivian go to be with her love an almighty battle is about to begin humans verses werewolves.


The first thing that strikes you about Blood And Chocolate is not the fact that all the cast whom are supposedly Romanian all talk perfect English, or in the case of Martinez French; but exactly how beautiful Romania is. The usual portrayal of the City of Bucharest looking desolate and almost war torn, is now a distant memory and everything about this movie inspires you to take your next holiday there, nothing bleak dark and menacing like the locations in Hostel, this is clean, chic, and incredibly cosmopolitan. This is a big deal to me, because I love to see movies shown in their true light, the locations of filming I mean, and I personally feel that Romania often get the rough end of the stick when it comes to perception of outsiders.

Praise for the city aside, sadly this film looks incredibly cheap, it has that hazy sort of made for TV or direct to video look about it. That being said on the other end of the spectrum Director Katja Von Garnier puts some tremendous looking glamour to romance shots, offering music video quality style montages that give a refreshing distraction from the otherwise cheap production values.

From a story perspective if a little more money had been thrown at this production I'm sure the outcome would be far different. Sadly Blood And Chocolate is a film that enjoys a limited audience share, and this is partly for the cheap looking visuals. From a storyline perspective what we have here is something far superior to other legend style movies like Underworld and Ginger Snaps. The film moves with great momentum mixing moments of inspiring love interest, too fast and high paced action.

Don't let the word werewolf confuse you, there is very little here to pull the movie into the category of horror, this is far more a tale of romance than horror; and this is indicated by the lack of bloodletting; horror perceived scenes feature no gore or up close shots of violence, it's all very tastefully delivered off camera. Realistically speaking this is a pretty much modern swing on Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet with two warring races instead of two families.

The acting varies from high quality with Bruckner and Dancy, to the abysmal with Martinez. Dancy outshines himself here, being the leading man of action initially reeking of weakness, he is strengthened by the discovery of Vivian's little secret (with past knowledge of the race of Loup-Garou, as he researches for his latest comic book publication), and the sudden battle for survival, he transforms from Mickey Mouse to Rambo by the movies conclusion. Bruckner who is best known as Linda from 24, shines as the leading lady and given chance to grow as her role also transforms throughout the movie. On the downside Martinez is just awful, it's difficult to realise that this is the same guy from Unfaithful, but then I guess the quality of his work is reflected in the little he has done in the way of acting over the last five years, although because of his relationship with Kylie he has never been far away from the media. Martinez is just not convincing here, cheese eeks from every paw and you have to bear into your mind that this is the movies big bad guy, personally I feel more danger opening a can of Pringles.

The DVD features a Directors commentary which offers little insight into the movie, but is at times entertaining on a completely unrelated series of monologues. The Deleted scenes are justified in their deletion, but like so many similar offerings these are short and often elongated versions of scenes that still are contained in the film.

I would not recommend purchasing Blood And Chocolate which you can get from Play.com for £9.99; however I would recommend a rental, because flaws aside I find that I enjoyed my 90 minutes of movie escapology.


Spencer Hawken 12/07

Summary: A woman finds love at ast, but is haunted by her less than conventional roots