Released on: 2010
Language: French
Genre:
Romantic Comedy/ Drama
Directed By: Jean-Pierre Améris
Screenplay By: Jean-Pierre Améris, Phillipe Blasband
Starcast: Benôit Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carré, Lorella
Cravotta, Lise Lamétrie, Swann Arlaud, Pierre Niney, Stéphan Wojtowicz
As simultaneously tasty and insubstantial as the bite-sized pieces of chocolate that its characters create, Jean-Pierre Améris’s Les Émotifs anonymes is a typically anodyne rom-com given a certain poignant piquancy by the paralyzing shyness of its romantic leads. As chocolatier Angélique (Isabelle Carré) explains to potential boss Jean-René (Benôit Poelvoorde) during her job interview, it’s the bitterness that defines a bar of chocolate, a quality that also characterizes the lives of both characters, who are so overwhelmed with fear (of life in general, but especially human contact) that neither can seemingly function in the world. Jean-René oversees a failing chocolate enterprise whose terrible product proves the operation’s downfall; Angélique is a brilliant chocolate maker and her recipes the key to saving Jean-René‘s trade, but she’s so morbidly self-effacing, she can only practice her art anonymously and thus won’t cop to her skills. Instead she’s assigned the position of sales rep until her secret talents eventually reveal themselves and she comes to the rescue of not only Jean-René‘s business, but his stopped-up heart.
Although never straying too far from the conventions
of the genre (unexpected romantic opportunities, missed connections, comic set
pieces), the film’s whimsical tone is continually undercut by an air of subdued
melancholy and its mode of humor is less riotous than pathetic. Which is to say
that even the farcical antics of an extended comedic sequence are tempered by
the look of perpetual sadness on Jean-René‘s face and the air of disappointed
optimism on Angélique’s. In other words, this is pathetic humor in the sense
that it generates pathos along with laughter (or, often, in its place). In the
film’s most extended set piece, a squirm-inducing first date between the
central couple is continually interrupted by the sweat-drenched Jean-René‘s
constant trips to a restaurant bathroom to change his besotted shirts. By the
time he bails on the evening by escaping through the washroom window, he’s
ceased to be a figure of fun and become an object of pity.
But pity isn’t the central attitude evoked by
Améris’s film, even if its main characters are legitimate subjects for our
emotional charity. A winningly sympathetic look at individuals whose irrational
fear of life has reduced them to the margins of functionality, Romantics Anonymous suggests
that even the most hopeless cases can be helped by sympathetic support groups
(the eponymous organization that Angélique frequents), friends, and the
romantic possibilities afforded by a similarly afflicted partner. The film may
not dig much below the surface in its portraiture of these individuals, and it
may not offer much in the way of laughs, but it’s sweet in a way that’s not
cloying and it’s not unpleasant going down. A few chocolate-oriented
scenes are especially enjoyable: those that articulate the unique sensory and
sensual pleasure of eating fine chocolate, and one about making the chocolate
itself. It is our heroine’s unique gift with chocolate that is vital to the
future success of the factory, and the scene really pins down what makes her
chocolate so special-the flavor combinations including chocolate and paprika,
green tea white chocolate, and even some sort of mushroom tuile, the textures,
and having an innate feel for the very nature of the medium-as well as the joy
that comes from creating something wonderful. Like a good piece of dark chocolate, Améris’s movie is tasty enough, but
with just that right amount of bitterness.
Green Tea White Chocolate
Ingredients
400 gms White
Chocolate Bar
125 ml Heavy
Whipping Cream
25 gms Unsalted
Butter
2 tbsp Green Tea Powder
Method
- Cut the white chocolate and butter into small pieces.
- Bring heavy whipping cream in a saucepan to almost boil over medium heat. Remove cream from heat when bubbles appear around the saucepan.
- Immediately add the white chocolate and butter to melt while the cream is still warm. Mix all together with rubber spatula until the mixture is smooth.
- Sift and add green tea powder into the mixture. Combine all together until the color is homogeneous.
- Pour the mixture into a prepared baking dish lined with parchment paper. Flatten the surface with spatula to remove any air bubbles.
- Refrigerate for 4-5 hours.
- Remove the green tea chocolate from the baking dish once it's firm. Warm knife under hot water and wipe it dry completely.
- Slice the chocolate block into 4 blocks, then cut each block into 9 small pieces (36 squares total).
- Dust extra green tea powder on top of the chocolate.
- Store the chocolate in the refrigerator until serving.
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