This chilling and seductive psychological drama is a look at a woman whose connections to the world of human relationships are so thin, only the scheming against her victims remain. Her murderous intentions are masked in the pleasant veneer of calm tastefulness, in everything from her flawless clothing to the special nightcap of chocolate she makes for her stepson. Director Claude Chabrol's latest film is among the best of his career. The unsettling story of the perversity that lurks beneath a harmless looking exterior is methodically laid out in a remarkable performance by Isabelle Huppert as Mika Muller, second wife of celebrated musician André Polonski (Jacques Durtonc). His first wife and the mother of his 18-year-old son Guillaume was killed, significantly, in a car crash eight years previously.

Displaying his mastery of perceptual suspense, Chabrol has a hit or miss record and scores a definite hit in Merci Pour le Chocolate. Based on the novel, The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong, he found a tidy persona to reveal the distorted nature of evil in the character of Mika, and the perfect player in Huppert. Always in control and impeccably appointed, she assesses the situation, calculates her options, and acts. A small smile plays perpetually about the corners of her mouth, in understated and chilly affability. The opening sequence at the second wedding of Mika and André sets the tone for her cool distance from emotion. Clues in the dialog and the demeanor lay the groundwork from the start that all is not what it appears. References are made to Guillaume's coming of legal age and the death of his mother.

The plot thickens over a mixed identity incident after the birth of Guillaume when André was presented with the wrong baby, a girl. Jeanne, the baby girl who shares Guillaume's birthday, is now eighteen and a budding pianist. Jeanne learns of the incident and that as a baby she was briefly held and kissed by famous pianist Polanski thinking she was his son. After hearing the story, she is intrigued and impulsively pays a visit to Polanski, his new wife, and son, Guillaume, who bears an uncanny resemblance in temperament not to his father but to Jeanne's mother. Mika begins to entice Jeanne into her web of deception.

Using a visual style of extreme facial close-ups and sterile interiors of the flawlessly decorated mansion shared by chocolate heiress Mika, André, and Guillaume, Chabrol intensifies the quiet spell Mika casts. An overturned cup of chocolate spills out thickly like blood from a fatal wound. Master of revealing the perverse tendencies that lurk inside the psyche, the diabolical machinations of the isolated soul suggest they are possible in anyone, anywhere. It is the detachment of Mika's soul, her disconnect, that is paramount. I wanted to know more about how this happened, but that is for another film. In the end, the power of observing the capabilities of a human to protect perceived self-interest is savagely real. To what length would one go to protect her nest? Like a female spider, she is a solitary creature who devours interlopers.

Isabelle Huppert: Mika Muller	Jacques Dutronc : André Polonski
Anna Mouglalis: Jeanne Pollet	Rodolphe Pauly: Guillaume Polonski
Directed by Claude Chabrol