Movie Review: Better Than Chocolate

post by Erin

According to a website I may have dreamed about, Better than Chocolate is the most popular movie to come out of Canada. It manages to narrowly win out against the only other movie Canada has ever made, Men with Brooms. Luckily for Canadians, with a movie about lesbians and another movie about curling, it manages to cover the interests of roughly the entire population anyways. Expect a movie about curling lesbians sometime in 2012.(Note: I would actually totally love that.)

Our story takes place in a nameless city, although it's probably supposed to be Toronto. For anyone who has never been to Canada, there’s basically Toronto and then the rest of us just live in small tribes of fifty to one hundred members, scattered across the arctic tundra.

We are introduced to Maggie, a nineteen year old college dropout who lipsyncs regularly at the local glow-in-the-dark gay bar and works at a Queer bookstore. Maggie meets Kim, a freelance artist who is living out of her van. How Kim even manages to afford gas for the thing on her meager income is left to the imagination. 

Don't worry, it's just paint.

The biggest obstacle to this emerging butch/femme romance is the presence of Maggie's mother and younger brother who have come to live in her apartment after a messy divorce. As you can imagine, Maggie isn't out to her family and her relationship with Kim is kept on the down low to avoid detection. 

The secrets quickly start to unravel, though, as Maggie is temporarily subletting the apartment from a woman who gives safe sex demonstrations and because of this, there is basically a dildo or vibrator in absolutely any place one can be concealed. Kim and Maggie sleep on the couch so that Maggie's mother can sleep in the bed. Maggie's seventeen year old brother spies them having sex one night (the the covers off too! They're not even trying to avoid being caught!) and, doing the reasonable thing, watches in amusement. 

This is where the movie takes an unrealistic turn. I don't know about you people out there but regardless of my orientation, if I ever accidentally saw my sibling on the job, I would react with repulsion and horror before having to be coaxed out of the bathroom after several hours.

Maggie's mother is a shrill, former housewife whose main concern is that her daughter isn't fashionable enough to get a man. She also bemoans her sex life (or lack thereof) to her children like it's nothing. Again, maybe I'm just prudish but I really don't want to know about the sex life of anyone in my family. If I came into the house one day to find my mother putting away groceries before looking up and exclaiming, "My GOD I haven't gotten laid in a while", I'd probably slowly retreat backwards out the door.

Maggie and Kim are both likable enough and mostly avoid running into too many stereotypes. Some of the other characters aren't so lucky. We have the Italian coffee shop owner next door who seems like he'd be more at home in Jersey than anywhere in Canada. We also have a bisexual woman in the cast, Carla, who might not even warrant a mention if not for the fact that she seems to think of and talk about sex all the time and has absolutely nothing else to do or say. It's kind of a stereotype that I'm sure annoyed a lot of bisexual women. However, she does manage to deliver one of the most poignant quotes in the movie-- "Soft centers, hard centers, I like all the chocolates in the box."

Other than that though, she's usually talking about her collection of anal beads. No, seriously.

 We also have Judy, a transgendered woman who has her eyes on the adorable Francis, the skittish owner of the bookstore. A little cringe worthy is when Judy strides up to Francis and declares that she's "almost a woman" and therefore they should go out. I don't claim to speak for the transgendered community but I dunno, it sort of struck me as a little offensive. She does redeem herself somewhat, however, with the amusing musical number 'I'm not a fucking drag queen' later on. 

We have to keep in mind that this movie is over ten years old now, made in 1999. The world was a different place back then. Looking like Saffron from Republica was considered cool and stylish. Internet backlash wasn't nearly as widespread and keeping a large van filled with gas was apparently affordable for someone who is essentially homeless. 

I doubt there are many people reading this blog who haven't seen Better than Chocolate. Without giving much else away, just remember it wasn't made in Hollywood so it has a standard happy ending where none of the gay people die. Its beginning to show it's age by now and in twenty more years, it might be virtually unwatchable. Who knows? Maggie and Kim provide the eye candy and the smoldering love scenes. Everything else is just a little too stereotypical and silly.

Still, it's a nice enough way to kill time on a boring Sunday afteroon.