Milk and chocolate
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Milk and chocolate |
| Original title | Romuald and Juliette |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1989 |
| length | 111 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Coline Serreau |
| script | Coline Serreau |
| production |
Philippe Carcassonne Jean-Louis Piel |
| music | Jérôme Reese |
| camera | Jean-Noël Ferragut |
| cut | Catherine Renault |
| occupation | |
| |
Milk and Chocolate is a French romance film directed by Coline Serreau in 1989.
action
Romuald Blindet is CEO of the yogurt company Blanlait. He lives with his two children and his wife Françoise in affluent circumstances, provides a housekeeper and has a mistress in his secretary Nicole, and plans to expand the company. He not only wants to drastically increase the level of hourly yoghurt production in the St. Symphorien plant, he also wants to take over his biggest competitor, the Vachelle company. In order to achieve his goals, he appoints his confidante Paulin, who in turn has a secret relationship with Romuald's wife, to his right hand - much to the displeasure of his long-term employees Blache and Cloquet, who are now taking revenge on him. In order to achieve an increase from 200,000 yoghurt cups to 250,000 per hour, Paulin has to save time. Cloquet advises him to forego the time-consuming quality and hygiene checks of the milk and not to have the vats in which the milk is stored cleaned every day, which always took several hours. Paulin, who doesn't know how to manage the increased production of cups anyway, accepts this. Simultaneously with Paulin's instruction not to examine any more milk samples, Cloquet has a middleman put coli bacteria in a vat. Sometime later, 45 people with food poisoning are rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Blache has instructed Nicole to buy Vachelle shares shortly before the takeover bid was announced. She later buys Blanlait shares instead, when it becomes clear that the company, battered by the food scandal, is about to be swallowed up by Vachelle. Blache, in turn, reports Nicole's purchases to the police and has her arrested by the authorities when she tries to bring the proceeds to Blache. As he had previously impressed on her, she now claims that she made the purchases on Romuald's instructions. Romuald is manipulated by Blache and now believes Paulin betrayed the company. He dismisses Paulin.
During all these events, the black cleaning lady Juliette Bonaventure worked unnoticed in the background. She quietly emptied the wastebasket while Blache and Cloquet were on the phone apparently undisturbed, and also intercepted a note on which Cloquet noted the dangerous E. coli as a reminder. When Romuald is just dismissing Paulin, Juliette joins them. She advises Romuald to distrust Cloquet. He should call him, who is allegedly on a business trip in the province, in Paris and tell him that everything has come out. A short time later, Cloquet would appear in his office. At the same time, Juliette Romuald makes it clear that his wife is not at home either, as he assumes. Romuald gets rid of them, but then calls Cloquet, who actually appears shortly afterwards. At home, Françoise cannot be found and Romuald realizes that Juliette was right, especially since he finds a message of love written on blue paper for his wife in a jacket. In turn, Romuald is deposed at the board meeting. Blache is installed as his successor, while Cloquet takes over Paulin's position. At a loss, Romuald goes to Juliette and finds accommodation with her. While she takes care of her large household and the five children of five fathers, Romuald ponders the things that could have happened behind his back at the company. Juliette tells him what she saw. He realizes that Nicole bought the shares on behalf of Blache and that Blache must have signed a contract with her about the return of the money after the coup. In fact, Juliette manages to find this document. She finally plays off Blache against Cloquet.
In addition to her work for Romuald, Juliette copes with her everyday life. It is the day of the fathers, a communal festival for all five fathers of the five children, on which all celebrate their birthday and receive presents. Aimé's father does not appear and Juliette is angry because the 17-year-old boy needs a father right now. Romuald steps in and gives him a Walkman . Through Juliette's efforts, the machinations of Blache and Cloquet are exposed and Romuald is rehabilitated. He returns to the company and thus to his everyday life and moves out of Juliette's. She soon has big problems: Cocaine was found on Aimé and he is arrested. She hopes that Romuald can find a good lawyer and pay the bail, but his new secretary does not pass her request on to Romuald, who has just traveled to the USA for negotiations. Juliette believes that Romuald suddenly doesn't care about the fate of her family and is deeply disappointed. Aimé is given a public defender and sentenced to a maximum of 1.5 years in prison. Some time later, Romuald is back in Paris and meets Juliette again one evening. She tells him about Aimé's sentence and he is irritated that he didn't know about it. In the evening he recognizes from Paulin's blue notebook that he is his wife's lover. He rushes back to the office, where he finds Juliette crying. He comforts her and they sleep together. The next day, Romuald moves into the hotel and quickly divorces his wife. He proposes to Juliette. However, she rejects him, since he only sees all people as his subordinates and has behaved like her boss in her apartment. Romuald begins to change. He fires his secretary, has Juliette brought to work in his car and buys her a dishwasher and washing machine. He secretly takes the children to school in his car and leaves Juliette huge flowers in the office. He also buys a new house where he wants to live with Juliette and the children. One day he waits for her after work and again confesses his love and all the things he likes about her and her family. Juliette recognizes his true affection and no longer rejects him. They discuss their future marriage and agree on a framework, so Juliette wants to keep the apartment and continue to work as a cleaning lady, while she will still be Romuald's right-hand man and move into the villa with him and the children. The family gets together with Romuald's children and finally the wedding takes place, in which all five ex-husbands Juliette and Romuald's ex-wife Françoise also take part. A little later Romuald and Juliette move into the new villa with their children. Romuald learns that Juliette is pregnant. Later she is seen with Françoise, who is also pregnant, and her husband Paulin as a happy extended family in the garden of the villa.
production
Milk and Chocolate was filmed in Paris, among other places. The film was released on March 22, 1989 in French cinemas, where 856,964 visitors saw it. It was shown in German cinemas on June 1, 1989 and also appeared on video on November 16, 1989.
It was the film debut of Firmine Richard and José Garcia, who can be seen in a small role as elevator repairers.
synchronization
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Romuald | Daniel Auteuil | Rudiger Bahr |
| Juliette | Firmine Richard | Rita Engelmann |
| Tarpaulin | Pierre Vernier | Horst Raspe |
criticism
The film-dienst wrote that “the beautiful dream of a love across all class and racial barriers ... begins with wit and turbulence”, but ends “in flat family kitsch”. “Really sweet, almost like a bar of chocolate,” said Cinema . "Impatiently and with almost relentless penetrance, this film stomps through all the shallows of a business satire until it finally soars into a fairytale in the last third," wrote Urs Jenny in the Spiegel .
Awards
Milk and Chocolate was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Non-English Language Film in 1991 .
Web links
- Milk and chocolate in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See allocine.fr
- ↑ Milk and Chocolate. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Milk and Chocolate. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cinema.de
- ↑ Urs Jenny: Truth with Cream . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1989, pp. 229 ( online ).