The movie Chocolat(2000) directed by Lasse Hallstrom is about a chocolatier named Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk. Vianne moves into a small town in France where everyone seems to be influenced by Comte de Reynaud, a heart-broken mayor, who manipulates the villagers through the speeches given during the church services. When the churchman finishes writing the speech, Comte revises it so that people listen to his idea of good, but as God’s will. Just as Comte is encouraging people to serve the time of Lent, which is a period of forty days for people to give up all their greed and temptations, Vianne arrives and opens a small chocolate shop. Comte considers Vianne and her daughter as intruders and makes effort to make them leave the town. Despite Comte and the villager’s hostility, Vianne endures in her business of a chocolaterie and slowly breaks down the prejudices that the town people hold with her chocolate.

When Vianne and Anouk arrive at the town, they become the only two who do not attend the church. The villagers are very harsh against these non-churchgoers as they believe that listening to the churchman’s speech and acting according to the God’s will are their duties throughout life. The first question that Comte asks Vianne is whether she attends the church or not. When the response was not what he had expected, he spreads the word about them and as a result, the mother and daughter are shunned by the town people. In other words, this means that the villagers do not accept inconformity to the society because they do not want their tradition and quiet life to be broken. Later in the movie, Anouk reproaches her mother for being different from other mothers. However, knowing that the people are being controlled by the mayor, she never chooses to go to the church or follow their tradition, but instead tries to fix people’s mind by with her chocolate. Chocolate tempts people in many ways and makes people rethink about their lives.

Vianne also notices a prejudice in the gender role. Every woman is required to get married to a man and serve them forever. Even if the husband is not treating his wife properly, women need to cook food for man and listen to him. People are very shocked when they find out that Vianne has a child without being married. Josephine Muscat was the wife of Serge Muscat. Josephine is physically beaten by her husband every day, but she does not have the courage to let other know about it because instead of helping her with the situation, people would just think she is crazy. As Josephine meets Vianne and learns to make chocolate, her life completely changes. She even finds the courage to smash Serge’s head with a pan.

People in the town are also very against the outsiders. When the pirates, the nomads who travel on boats, arrive at the bank of the rivers, Comte and the others immediately hold a meeting to discuss what to do with them. During the meeting, people only have negative opinions of them because they believe that those outsiders are a bad influence to their society. Soon, people come to a conclusion that they should make them leave on their own by boycotting. They decide not to sell anything to the drinks. When Roux brings two little girls to buy her something to drink, the owner refuses to sell the drink. Only, Vianne lets them in and serve them chocolate.

Vianne’s chocolate helps people throw people’s strong prejudice. Chocolate sparks the dried relationship between a married couple and motivates an old man to show his love towards an old woman both of which are forbidden during the time of Lent. Vianne’s chocolate slowly changes the way people live in the town. People who were invited to Vianne’s chocolate party for Armande thinks differently of the pirates and even joins the party on their ship. When one eats a chocolate, he suddenly feels an emotion that they have never felt before. Even Comte, who strictly follows the tradition and is against Vianne’s chocolaterie in the beginning, changes his mind after eating chocolate. He just could not resist them. Throughout the movie, Comte struggles because he loves Caroline Clairmont, Luc’s mother, but he could not reveal his emotion toward her. At the end of the movie, Comte asks her to a dinner during a chocolate festival, which would never have occurred without Vianne and her chocolate.