Product Description

As a young girl living in the remote mountains of Colorado, Vivian (Bruckner) watched helplessly as her family was murdered by a pack of angry men for the secret they carried in their blood. Vivian survived the attack by running into the woods and changing into a wolf. Ten years later, Vivian is living a relatively safe and normal life in Bucharest, Romania. Vivian spends her days working in a chocolate shop and nights trawling the city’s underground clubs, fending off the reckless antics of her cousin Rafe, and his gang of delinquents he refers to as "The Five."

Vivian’s life begins to unravel when she has a chance encounter with Aiden (Dancy), an artist researching Bucharest’ ancient art and relics for his next graphic novel. Aiden pursues Vivian until she relents and begins to see him, but she can’t bring herself to tell him the truth - and lives in fear of showing him who she really is. Even though Vivian has sworn never to kill, she is as much an animal as she is human, and her love for Aiden threatens to cast him to the very wolves who saved her life and who are waiting for their chance to hunt him as prey.

Stills from Blood & Chocolate (click for larger image)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7616 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2007-06-12
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
When graphic novelist Aiden (Hugh Dancy) travels to Bucharest to research the loup garou legend, he nearly gets devoured in the latest female werewolf film, Blood and Chocolate. In the tradition of Werewolf Woman and Ginger Snaps, Blood and Chocolate stars Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner), a girl who's forced to face her lupine tendencies in order to discover how capable of loving Aiden she really is. Based on a book by Annette Curtis Clause, the film chronicles the lives of the remaining loup garou who are an extended Romanian family waiting for their pack leader, Gabriel, to select his new mate. His desire for Vivian means trouble when her wish to be with Aiden results in her revealing too much about the clan's secretive lifestyle. In this film, werewolves look fully human until their eyes glow with colored contact lenses while they fly through the air to then land as full-fledged wolves. Gone are the days, apparently, of films showing the transformation in all its hairy, explosive detail. A lack of scenes describing the werewolf metamorphosis make this film more a love story than a monster tale, though two forest gatherings in which the loup garou hunt human sacrifices offer some grizzly satisfaction. Unlike the aforementioned femme werewolf films, Blood and Chocolate features a girl fighting her urge to kill in a bid to unite humans with her brethren, making this movie the most peaceful in its genre. With a tame wolf as protagonist, the potential nightmare is really just a pleasant dream to unite the two disparate worlds. The question is: Do we want that to happen? --Trinie Dalton

Customer Reviews

Not much blood, not much chocolate
SPOILERS for the movie and the book.

I thought this movie might be in trouble when I saw the trailer weeks before its release date and the theater audience howled with derisive laughter at the trailer voice-over's oh-so-dramatic unveiling of the awkward title: "BLOOD...AND CHOCOLATE." The thing is, people who haven't read the book wouldn't get the seemingly incongruous title. In Annette Curtis Klause's 1999 Young Adult novel (read it eons ago), BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE was a metaphor for Vivian's internal struggle between her werewolf heritage (the "blood") and her desire for a human boy (the "chocolate"). Here, the "chocolate" part seemingly refers to her being employed in a chocolate shop.

But let's get to the movie plot. In contemporary Bucharest, one of the very last wolf packs on earth survives and continues to hunt. Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner) is a troubled (but hot) young werewolf, haunted by a tragic past. She revels in running thru the Romanian woods but abhors the pack's bloodcurling tendency to chase down the occasional human victim. Vivian spends her days toiling away in a chocolate shop and her nights haunting the hot Bucharest night spots. One evening, while hanging out in a desolate chapel, she has a chance encounter with Aiden (Hugh Dancy), an artist who is researching the legends of the loup garoux (werewolves) for his next graphic novel. He's interested. She is, too, but rebuffs him. He persists and she succumbs to seeing him. Of course, they fall in love. Of course, it's not quite that easy.

As per ancient custom, it seems that the leader of the werewolf pack, Gabriel (Olivier Martinez), must take a new wife every seven years and has been eyeing Vivian for his latest bride; so he's not about to let some human get in his way. Add to that the unsavory capers perpetrated by Viv's cousin Rafe (Bryan Dick) and his clique, the "Five," and the love story of Vivian and Aiden threatens to fizzle out before its time. Shades of Capulet and Montague!

I wondered if the film would be able to survive the burden of an incongruous title. Sadly...no. BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE suffers firstly from having a PG-13 rating as the movie finds itself reduced to a fangless state, with neither enough goriness nor titillation. Too, this film horribly butchers Annette Curtis Klause's popular book. Readers of the novel are bound to be disappointed and even heart-broken by all the changes made to make the feature more "Hollywood," as the book's core story is basically gutted, leaving the character names and the lycantrophic premise as the sole survivors of the wholesale alterations. Briefly, some of the things that were changed: in the movie, the story is set in Bucharest, Romania, instead of in the U.S.; in the movie, Vivian works in a chocolate shop, instead of being in high school; Vivian's mother isn't present in the film (she has a key role in the book); also, the book depicts Vivian as embracing her werewolfness; and, importantly, the natures of Gabriel and Aiden have been drastically modified.

A word to the gorehound: the film focuses more on the romantic aspect than the horror elements. In fact, I wasn't too impressed with the horror elements or the action sequences. Here, when the werewolves transform, they do so in a sterilized blur, instead of the nifty, gory and messy gradual segue from man to monster. And since these are the same producers who did UNDERWORLD, I guess they're trying to make Vivian over in Kate Beckinsale's Selene mold. But I think there are enough film babes out there who deliver these same trite action scenes. Meanwhile, the special effects are serviceable, if ho-hum.

The actors are gorgeous but prove to be inconsequential. Agnes Bruckner and Hugh Dancy have some chemistry, but their ponderous acting serves to sabotage their rapport. Olivier Martinez, to me, is just miscast for the role of the heavy. Maybe it's too hard to be villainous when you have a French accent, unless everyone in the cast is French. Or maybe Martinez is just too...lightweight.

Another drawback. I've always thought there was an element of tragedy in the werewolf mythos, of being forced to become a ravening beast against your will and losing all control and inhibition when the moon is full. But, in this movie, the moon's phase isn't much of a factor as the pack can transform at will. To me, this takes away some of the tension and part of the allure of the werewolf mythos. As well with this movie's proposition that werewolves can't infect their victims and "turn" them. You're either born a loup garou or you're not. This premise also takes away from some of the implied peril in the movie. When in a zombie, vampire, or werewolf flick, one of the biggest fears and carriers of suspense is that the viewer's favorite characters might become infected.

Now I realize that part of my lukewarm reaction to this flick is that, after all these years, I still fondly remember the book I've read. I've pretty much accepted that when a great book becomes a movie, it loses something in translation. Every now and then, you do have superb film renditions of books (TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, LORD OF THE RINGS, HARRY POTTER...) or, even in rare instances, a film that improves on the book (TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT), but mostly, we'll get efforts like BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE. So let me say this, if I haven't read the book, I probably would've rated this film higher, maybe three stars. I'm usually pretty generous and I normally enjoy supernatural/fantasy horror features. But I have read the book and anjoyed it, and I'm a bit put out that so much was changed. Add to that the fact that the film's story is rife with cliches, the dialogue is boring, and the acting is only so-so. So, two stars from me, one star because Agnes Bruckner is hot.

But, hey, at least Uwe Boll didn't direct this one, right?

Blood and Chocolate...**spoiler**
When I was in High school, I found Blood and Chocolate on the book shelf of the library and thought it had interesting name, so I read it. I loved it, and didn't want to give it back to the library. It was such an interesting and unique book, that I wanted it, and wound up getting my mom to buy it for me.

When I saw several years down the line that they were making a movie from it, I was so excited! I wanted to see it in theaters, but wasn;t able to and just today I got it off of netflix and watched it with my husband. I was very dissapointed in it, (though he liked it quite a bit more than I did).

Yes, it does give a nice new spin on werewolves, which I did enjoy. But I started watching it expecting something a LOT closer to the story than this. They turned a story of teenage angst and struggle for acceptance both of herself and with others, into a Hollywood cliche.

While the characters are similar, the movie is set in a totally different country than in the book, and Vivian lost her parents in the movie, while in the book, her mother plays an important role. So many differences! The only thing it appears is still the same in both the book and the movie, is that they are werewolves, Vivian falls in love with a human, and Gabriel wants her to be his mate. A few other similarities do occur, though they are minor, and the changes in the story make these similarities hard to recognize.

I did enjoy the movie, don't get me wrong, and I would have loved it if I hadn;t read the book first. The lack of gore and greusome tranformation was actually rather a nice change to me, but dangit, I wanted to see the fight for dominanace that is in the book, the passage that Vivian went through from girl to woman. Her final acceptance of who she is, and the acceptance of the pack for who she is. I wanted to see the book I love put to life.

After watching the movie, I went to find my old beat up copy of the book, only to see that I had lost it, so if some of my comparisons are inaccurate, please forgive me, but I do know for a fact that this movie was not the real Blood and Chocolate, just a very expensive knock-off.

A Paranormal Flop
I was really excited about seeing this movie when I heard what it was about. I was expecting something fantastic because the plot sounded really good and creative. However, when I finally got to see the movie I was extremely disappointed in the quality of the production. I think the only thing I really enjoyed was the detail displayed in the gothic like scenery and I didn't think they did that bad of a job turning humans into wolves. Although, with all of the technological advances of the day, I think they could have had something more impressive. Overall, I don't think this movie is worth owning and it disappointed me.