It’s Only A Chocolate Moon,
June-Version 2 Million And Seventy-One Of The “Boy Meets Girl” Saga-Jean-Pierre
Ameris’ “Romantics Anonymous” (2010)-Better “Les Émotifs anonymes » -A Film
Review
DVD Review
By Sarah Lemoyne
Les Émotifs anonymes-Romantics Anonymous, starring Benoit Poelvoorde, Isabelle Carre, 2010
I have only been in the
film reviewing business, profession really since I went to graduate school at
NYU for a short while (at least let me call it a profession to satisfy my beleaguered
parents who wound up paying for me to become a professional at something, paid a
ton of money so bear with me). I have had many conversations with my unofficial
“mentor” Seth Garth who has been particularly helpful in my struggle to be the “Queen”
of 21st century film noir against the limitation posed by the
so-called “King” of film noir in the middle of the 20th century or
thereabouts Sam Lowell. (In the inevitable interest of transparency Sam an old
friend of Seth’s from high school days which has not hindered him from helping
me.) Fortunately today I do not have to lock horns with Sam in doing this review
of the French-Belgian film Romantics
Anonymous but Seth helped me nevertheless. Or maybe better Sam through Seth
when he pointed out that Hollywood and later other film centers has survived by
playing about two million versions of the “boy meets girl” theme which they
grabbed from early in the Western literary canon, maybe Homer with his sweet
music hexameter The Illiad. When I
thought about it later I checked through the recent film review archives and noticed
from Robin Hood grabbing Lady Marion to Phillip Marlowe grabbing some ravishing
blonde that theme really does resonate.
All this lead-in to let the
reader know that the film under review, except maybe to say “man meets woman”
is deeply indebted to that trope-doesn’t actually make an sense otherwise.
Doesn’t grab the viewer, as it did me, unless you take it for granted that the
film is trying to pull at your heartstrings-and succeeds. The only addition that
I make to the genre is the observation that this meeting was a very unusual- two
social misfits meeting and cavorting despite their anxieties. Their social shyness.
Angelique, played by fetching
and doe-eyed Isabelle Carre, is a bundle of social anxieties who is in an
anonymous group trying to overcome her affliction. She also happens to be one
great chocolatier, a natural who is befriended by a fellow candy man who let
her make her chocolate confections at home and let the legend of her work thrive in secret. Problem though
is that eventually that candy man died and left her high and dry looking for another job. That
job search was finally successful when she was hired at the Chocolate Mill, a
struggling old-fashioned candy operation headed by Jean-Rene who as it turned
out was also filled with about six million social anxieties as well. Second problem-Angelique
was hired by Jean-Rene, played by antic, frantic Benoit Poelvoorde, to be a
sales representative-to go sell chocolate not make confections. Not good. As
the film moves along Jean-Rene who is seeing a therapist is given various
exercises to help break his social patterns (or lack of social graces) just as
Angelique is using her group sessions to get a handle on her anxieties. The two
are a carnival of mixed messages and misunderstandings.
That “collision” triggers
the couple getting together for dinner and other social misadventures, some scenes
which are funny and are added by Jean-Rene’s facial expressions and Angelique’s
doe-eyed responses. Also along the way she helps bail out the firm by getting secretly
back into her great chocolatier hermit character through a thin guise. At some
point, probably well before they actually spent the night together-unintentionally,
you know, you can bet six, two and even as Seth says (which he later told me he
got from Sam who got it from an old high school friend known as the Scribe who
was addicted to film noir private detective films) they will be together, will
get married, or be together some way, even if they have to run away from each other
for a while. A little gem of a feel good film but I wonder, given my own social
anxieties and that of my partner, whether two people really would get together like
this pair based on their personalities. Just a question though in the eternal “boy meets girl” mix (which is now expanded to
whatever coupling anybody is into-which is okay too).
