[font=Century Gothic][color=red]Watching a Claude Chabrol film is like walking along, looking up at the sky for UFO's while not seeing the wall, that you're about to walk into. Chabrol's films are refreshingly straight-forward which can work very well in a film like "This Man Must Die" but can also backfire like it did in "Flower of Evil" where everything that is ever going to happen to the characters is revealed in the first ten minutes; the next eighty minutes is just a complete waste.[/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000]Another film, that he directed, "Merci Pour Le Chocolat" starts out with a wedding of two middle aged people - concert pianist, Andre Polonski and chocolate factory owner Mika Muller. Then, we shift to a story being told to a young concert pianist, Jeanne Pollet, about a near mixup at the hospital when she was born between her and the Polonskis' baby. Jeanne imagines herself as Polonski's daughter. Oh, and Polonski's first wife died, falling asleep at the wheel of the car...So, what transpires is a thoughtful rumination on family and genetics that ends on a suspenseful note. [/color][/font][font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000][/color][/font] [font=Century Gothic][color=#ff0000]Note: at the wedding, one of the characters mentions that Polonski is a great pianist but not a great human being.(It is true that the only thing that interests Polonski is playing the piano which forges a quick bond between him and Jeanne.) Which got me thinking about whether or not any resemblence between the fictional Polonski and the real life Roman Polanski was intended.[/color][/font]