Subject fails to make 'Chocolate' worthwhile

"Better than Chocolate" is one of those movies that believes far too unquestioningly in its own sense of entitlement. "I will make a film with girl-on-girl action!" I imagine director Anne Wheeler announced to everyone within earshot. "It will be predictable in every way and then some except that it will have girls in love with girls!" Memo to Wheeler: just because you've decided to become a part of the oftentimes-lovely current movement in gay cinema does not automatically make your film worthwhile. In the case of "Chocolate," there's a whole lot out there that's better than.

In a picturesque quarter of Vancouver, fresh-faced, recent college drop-out Maggie (Karyn Dwyer) works at 10 Percent Books with a gaggle of other lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

Now, excuse me for one moment here while I attempt to dig myself out of a potential letter-to-the-editor week-long protest. The only reason this is all being mentioned - in a stronger film, say, "High Art," it would be irrelevant because the script

Courtesy of Trimark Pictures Marya Delver and Karyn Dwyer play co-workers in "Better than Chocolate."

makes it so - is because there are precisely two heterosexual characters presented to us in "Better than Chocolate." Everyone else is out and proud - so much so that they don't seem to have anything else on their minds other than getting busy or making sure that everyone else knows that they're out and proud.

There is no middle ground with these characters between blatant, well, not exactly sluttiness, but something in that vein with a nicer surface, and sexual repression. Not that there's anything wrong with any of that.

Back at the bookstore, Maggie sleeps on a couch until she finds a sublet from a safe sex toy sculptress. Just as she's moving in, mommy dearest (Wendy Crewson) calls to announce that she and Maggie's brother Paul (Kevin Mundy) will be arriving in several days to live with Maggie. Oh no! Whatever will Maggie do? Will she be honest with her mother and come out? Will she pretend that the not-very-good artist, Kim (Christina Cox), is just a friend rather than the light of her life? Is there any doubt whatsoever that Maggie will tell her mother everything, live happily ever after with Kim and become the central target of hatemongering by the end of the movie? Absolutely not. More importantly, will we have to pretend to like and endure musical number after awful musical number at the local girlie bar?

Other high drama involves bookstore proprietor Frances (Anne-Marie MacDonald), who is busy giving unusually unimpassioned-yet-loud speeches (though they're more like rants, really) to unimpressed customs agents holding her sexually explicit books hostage.

Then there's the as-yet-unrequited love and attraction between she and Judy (Peter Outerbridge). And let's not forget the "You're good enough, smart enough and doggone it people like you!" crap spewed by Judy that gets Maggie's mom, Lila, back on her feet again and in touch with her, uh, inner self.

The violence and prejudice embodied by skinheads that lurk in the background of "Better than Chocolate," while worth presenting to audiences after the real-life violence that has been in the news all too often of late with, is handled so hamfistedly that it might as well not be there. By the time it moves from the background to the foreground you're ready to smack your forehead in disgust and annoyance. And that could be said about the rest of the film, as well.

Unexciting, uneventful, uninventive, "Better than Chocolate" is purely by the numbers. It trades in on its status as gay-themed cinema and tries to get us to look the other way, to use that status as an excuse for its sheer mediocrity. That's not right. The last several years have seen a burgeoning gay film scene filled with original, well-made movies. This is not one of them.

You want girls? You want impenetrably deep relationships, love, drama, life taken seriously? Rent "High Art." It's better than chocolate, unlike "Better than Chocolate."

09-22-99