Isn't It Romantic?

Welcome to the Swiss bourgeoisie, where great wellsprings of underground anxiety, rage and resentment seep through the walls of placid propriety and convention. Though it's based on a novel by the American mystery writer Charlotte Armstrong, Merci Pour le Chocolat is a particularly French thriller: Genre serves more as a frame for philosophical speculation (in this case, the middle-class psyche) than it does for action. No one dies onscreen -- the nearest thing to spilled blood is the stain of chocolate spreading over a floor -- and nothing seems to burst the bubble of complacency in which this family floats. The story proceeds, by minuscule tonal shifts and barely perceptible changes in the atmospheric temperature, from touches of ghoulish comedy -- Polonski and the protégé "who makes [him] feel young again" perfecting her performance of a Liszt funeral march -- to the creepy stillness of death that pervades the house. Chabrol teases us with physical resemblances: Guillaume looks like his father, Jeanne like the long-dead Lisbeth. (Huppert, for her part, is magnificent, an enigmatic echo of her twisted musician in Michael Haneke's horribly grandiloquent The Piano Teacher.) In the end, what matters is not so much what Mika has done or will do, or even whom she has fooled, as the willingness of those in her orbit to fool themselves. "Instead of loving," she says, "I say 'I love you,' and people believe it."

POSSESSION | Directed by NEIL LABUTE | Written by DAVID HENRY HWANG, LAURA JONES and LABUTE | Based on the novel by A.S. BYATT | Produced by PAULA WEINSTEIN and BARRY LEVINSON | Released by Focus Features | Citywide

MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT | Directed by CLAUDE CHABROL | Written by CAROLINE ELIACHEFF and CHABROL Based on the novel The Chocolate Cobweb by CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG | Produced by MARIN KARMITZ | Released by Empire Pictures | At Laemmle Royal, Laemmle Playhouse 7