Merci pour le chocolat
Metascore
82 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 19 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 19
  3. Negative: 0 out of 19
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    100
    It is a movie about the gradual erosion of life's seeming certainties, and it's also about the destructive immorality that may lie beneath the most exquisitely composed veneer. As we watch "Chocolat," this great director and his great actress, Huppert, convince us: Evil is.
  2. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    90
    Self-contained, enigmatic, illuminated from within, Huppert banks a performance that pays dividends throughout the film.
  3. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    90
    Once again Chabrol's son Mathieu has composed a crucially evocative score, and Renato Berta's cinematography is gleaming. Merci Pour le Chocolat crackles with wit and elegance, humor and pathos.
  4. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    90
    A treat, a delicious blend of perversity, playfulness and deadly passion concealed beneath the tranquil, moneyed surface of the Swiss bougeoisie.
  5. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    90
    Every moment of the way, there is a delectable sense of subtle menace and, at the center of it all, Huppert's haunting expression, part sphinx, part grace and maybe part scary.
  6. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    88
    Like some of Hitchcock's films, the story - adapted from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, an American mystery writer of the '40s and '50s - can be accused of stretching credibility and coincidence almost to the breaking point.
  7. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    Huppert has never been this cheerful, or lethal, and the movie itself is like Hitchcock's ''Rebecca'' reshot for House & Garden, with all the ghosts pulled out of the closet.
  8. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    80
    The story proceeds, by minuscule tonal shifts and barely perceptible changes in the atmospheric temperature, from touches of ghoulish comedy -- to the creepy stillness of death that pervades the house.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    80
    Chabrol handles the upended family dynamic beautifully until the final third, when a wildly implausible sequence of events lessens the suspense just as he should be turning the screws.
  10. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    80
    Mr. Chabrol's droll assault on petit-bourgeois security feels like a satire of "Ordinary People" directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
  11. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Schickel
    80
    Occasionally succumbs to Mika's legato rhythms, but it is more often a sly, subtle comedy about the oh-so-gentle art of murder.
  12. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    80
    The film is a masterpiece of nuance and characterization, marred only by an inexplicable, utterly distracting blunder at the very end.
  13. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    80
    Unfortunately, a conclusion stuffed with so many improbabilities that it left me gaping in disbelief. Prior to that, this is pretty much fun.
  14. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Isabelle Huppert has the best poker face since Buster Keaton. She faces the camera with detached regard, inviting us to imagine what she is thinking.
  15. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    75
    Not since Cary Grant offered Joan Fontaine a gleaming glass of milk has a bedtime toddy looked as suspicious as it does in Claude Chabrol's wittily enigmatic Merci pour le chocolat.
  16. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    75
    An elegant study in perversity.
  17. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Janice Page
    75
    The magic of their perfectly shaded performances is that you always have to wonder ... Is she really that bad?
  18. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    60
    The film is ridiculously overplotted, and very little of the plot serves any purpose other than to motivate what you can pretty well guess is going to happen from the outset.
  19. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Paula Nechak
    58
    This bloodless, nuanced little thriller carries small weight save for Huppert's enigmatic, thrifty performance.

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