Not particularly satisfying overall, but Huppert’s always fantastic playing characters with dark, ulterior motives in this psychological drama from Chabrol.
Review #2,787
Dir. Claude Chabrol
2000 | France | Drama | 101 min | 1.66:1 | French
Not rated – likely to be PG13 for some mature themes
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Anna Mouglalis
Plot: When the wife of the pianist André dies in an accident, he remarries his first wife, the chocolatier Mika. Together with his son Guillaume, they live a perfect family life. But when the young pianist Jeanne arrives in search of a mentor, it becomes clear that not all is well beneath the surface.
Awards: Official Selection (Venice & Toronto)
International Sales: MK2
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Relationship & Psychology
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
Also known in French as Merci pour le chocolat (or ‘Thank You for the Chocolate’), which sounds deceptively Christmassy, the oddly titled Nightcap doesn’t quite tell you immediately what the film is about.
But the prospect of seeing Isabelle Huppert starring in yet another film by Claude Chabrol, after successful outings such as Story of Women (1988) and La ceremonie (1995), is more than enough of a hook.
She plays Mika, the heiress of a famous chocolate factory, who remarries her ex-husband, Andre (Jacques Dutronc), when he becomes a widower after his second wife dies in a tragic accident.
Mika inherits Andre’s unambitious son from his second marriage, but things get much more complicated when a young woman, Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), pops up at their doorstep, claiming to be Andre’s daughter who had been mistakenly swapped at birth.
“I have a knack for doing wrong.”
Both Andre and Jeanne share an eerily similar passion—they are professional pianists. Leave it to Chabrol to put the disparate pieces of the plot together, though I personally feel Nightcap is one of his weaker works inasmuch as I didn’t find it satisfying enough.
Its provocations, however, simmer underneath the upper-middle-class veneer of Andre’s luxurious house and the performative gestures of classical piano (Liszt’s dark and haunting ‘Funerailles’ is their go-to practice piece).
Huppert is excellent and always fantastic when playing characters with dark, ulterior motives. Fans will definitely draw a connection between Chabrol’s film with Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, which was released only a year later.
If the multiverse were real, another version of Mika would have learnt how to play the piano and inflict even greater psychological—and sadomasochistic—damage.
Grade: B-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 