Five years have passed since Chocolat, the story of a woman
(or is she a witch?) who, with her six-year-old daughter,
Anouk, blows into the stuffy little village of Lansquenet
and opens her chocolate shop at just the wrong time -- and in
just the wrong place -- incurring the wrath of the local
priest and pitting Church against Chocolate.
Since then,
things have changed. Vianne has another daughter, Rosette;
Anouk has started secondary school; and the three of them
are living in a rented chocolaterie in the Montmartre
district of Paris. On the surface, life seems good; Anouk
goes to school; Vianne has finally found a niche for
herself. She is accepted within the community. She has
learnt to conform; to blend in. The wind has stopped blowing
-- for a while.
But security has a high price, and Vianne
has made some heavy sacrifices. She has given up her
mother’s ways; the magic that she and her daughters shared.
She has given up her identity, living now under the name of
Yanne Charbonneau. She has even given up making chocolates --
the demands of motherhood are just too much -- and now orders
her stock, just like everyone else. Most importantly, she
has given up true love -- in the person of Rosette’s father,
Roux -- and is considering marriage to her reassuringly
conventional landlord Thierry, who promises her financial
security and a home for her children.
Meanwhile, Anouk (now
called Annie) is on the cusp of adolescence. A misfit and a
loner at school, she hates Paris, resents the "new" Vianne,
and desperately misses the intimacy they once had together.
Rosette is nearly four years old, with physical and
behavioural problems that are only exacerbated by her
uncanny and disturbing Accidents...
Onto this stage comes
Zozie de l’Alba, blowing into town on the Day of the Dead.
Beautiful, passionate, bohemian and fabulously indifferent
to convention, she befriends Anouk, moves into the shop,
seduces half the neighbourhood with her effortless charm and
little by little, helps Vianne regain, not only her skills,
but her life --
But Zozie is not without an agenda. Little
by little her influence grows - over Vianne, the shop, the
customers, but most of all over Anouk, who sees in her an
echo of her own mother, without all the fears that inhibit
her. And as Christmas approaches and Zozie’s "help" becomes
increasingly more questionable, it becomes clear that behind
the charismatic façade there hides a cold and malevolent
being, her power immense; her greed insatiable; her ultimate
goal -- Possession.
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