Critics and readers alike were swept up by the novel's dramatic use of chocolate as a metaphor for the liberating powers of pleasure. One of those drawn to Harris's tale was director Lasse Hallstrom, who most recently undertook the screen adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules.

Hallstrom saw at the heart of Harris's unusual fable a quality he always looks for in his cinematic stories: a celebration of the funny, eccentric and wonderfully unpredictable ways human beings behave with one another. Hallstrom also found himself enchanted by the story's exploration of life's most delectable moments - and how they arise from the bitter, the dark and the semi-sweet. Ultimately, he saw the fable's moral as a call for tolerance, not just tolerance for indulgent pleasures like chocolate but a deeper appreciation for the wide expanse of human foibles and quirks.

"To me, CHOCOLAT is a very funny fable about temptation and the importance of not denying oneself the good things in life," says Hallstrom. "It's about the constant conflict in life between tradition and change. And at its very centre it is about intolerance and the consequences of not letting other people live out their own lives and beliefs."

Hallstrom was particularly intrigued by the story's multi-layered tone, which has the magical essence of a fairy-tale, yet presents a series of characters whose emotions and concerns from marital mistakes to family dishonesties -- are palpably, often humorously, real. "I was interested in the broad range of elements in this story: the dramatic, comedic, at times farcical, the poetic, a comic fable that doesn't simplify its character portraits but is rooted in reality."

"I think a noticeable common thread in all my movies is a fascination with depicting human irrationality in all its wondrous, endearing forms."

Writer Robert Nelson Jacobs found himself descending deeper and deeper into a chocoholic haze as he worked on the adaptation of CHOCOLAT, for which he conducted intensive research into the history, mystical legacies and myths surrounding chocolate. (Despite his cardiologist brother's warnings, Jacobs felt that he had to sample the wide range of chocolate's exultant effects - for authenticity's sake, of course.) But the more Jacobs savoured the chocolate, the more he was drawn into the story's rich centre and its insights into human desires and the destructive impulses of repression and bigotry.

Jacobs decided from the beginning that his priority would be to get the mix of CHOCOLAT's elements exactly right, blending comedy, sensuality and dramatic confrontation with a hint of something mysterious in the recipe as well. I was very drawn to the charm and the magic in the story, to the mixture of wit and wisdom," says Jacobs.

"I wanted to strike a real balance between the humour, the dramatic surprises and most of all the real emotional honesty of the characters."

"I felt that CHOCOLAT was, at its heart, the story of how Vianne gives people faith in themselves and how, in turn, they give that gift back to her. It's not just the story of how Vianne changes Lansquenet but how Lansquenet changes Vianne."

Jacobs also wanted to present each of the townsfolk of Lasquenet as real, flesh-and-blood human beings, each filled with strengths and foibles of their own - the heroes fallible, the villains compassionate. His vision of Lansquenet was of a fable-like town populated by very human troubles and triumphs. Jacobs did make one major change from the novel, which places the town's priest at the center of the battle with Vianne. Jacobs instead turned Reynaud from a priest into a nobleman and turned the town's priest into a mere pawn in Reynaud's machinations.

Explains producer Leslie Holleran: "In Bob Jacobs' script, the conflict between Vianne and Reynaud goes beyond church versus chocolate to something more universal. It becomes a conflict between a woman who blows in on the wind and a man who believes in tradition, rigidity, control and piety. This was an inspired and surprising bit of writing that really resonates in a global way. It's a testament to Bob Jacobs' inventiveness that he took the ideas of the novel and gave them even more scope. And of course the humor and humanity of the Comte De Reynaud really appeals to Lasse Hallstrom's style." 

"What's wonderful about the script is that it could translate into any society in the world at any time period," notes David Brown. "It is a written as a story that people of all ages can enjoy but it has a real cutting edge to it." Robert Jacobs also deepened the historical aspects of CHOCOLAT, delving into the mythladen history of chocolate among Mexico's lost Mayan. Indian civilization. Comments Joanne Harris, author of the novel: "I loved Bob Jacobs' script, and I thought he did a very nice job of interpreting the essence of the book in a way that comes alive at the movies."

It seems that long before Vianne Rocher entered the picture, chocolate has been a factor in the battle between life's pleasures and those who would deny them.

The real-life history of chocolate is filled with contradictory rumours and fairytales. There are those who have spoken of chocolate's mystical powers and healing qualities, and yet chocolate has also incited repression, moral judgements and even political banishment.

Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs delved into this rich and pungent history in order to give the character of Vianne a legacy steeped in mystery - a legacy that goes all the way back to the Mayan Indians and a tree bearing a fruit known as "the food of the gods."

Chocolate literally grows on trees, appearing in its raw state as pods on the 40-60 foot tall trees known botanically as "Theobroma cacao," which means "food of the gods." This wide branching tropical evergreen has grown wild in Central America since prehistoric times. It also grows in South America, Africa and part of Asia.

The Mayan Indians of Mexico began using a form of chocolate as early as 600 a.d., at which point they worshiped the cocoa bean as an idol, a literal gift from the heavens.

Cocoa beans were thought to have fearsome magical powers by the Maya and were carefully used in rituals, religious ceremonies and healings by priests. The Maya used cocoa medicinally as a treatment for fever, coughs and even discomfort during pregnancy.

The Maya had a God, Ykchaua, who served as the patron of cocoa merchants. The Maya were the first to invent a cocoa drink, a hot, mostly bitter beverage made up ground cocoa pods and spices. Later, the Aztec Indians improved upon the recipe, sweetening it with vanilla and honey. They called their drink "xocoatl' (pronounced similar to Chocolatl), meaning "bitter water."

In Aztec myth, the god of agriculture, QuestzalcoatI, travelled to earth carrying the cocoa tree from Paradise, because it would bring humans wisdom and power. Chocolate became so highly regarded by the Aztecs that it was used as a form of currency along with gold dust. The Florentine Codex, one of the main historical sources describing Aztec life, calls chocolate "The drink of nobles," and notes that it must be prepared with the meticulous care due to its powerful nature.

Although Columbus returned to Europe with the first cocoa beans, no one knew what to do with them and they were dismissed in favour of other trade goods. Europeans got their first real taste of chocolate when Emperor Moctezuma met the explorer Cortes and his army with a foaming hot-chocolate drink. In 1528 when Cortes returned to Spain from the New World, he brought with him the Aztec's chocolate drink making equipment and the trend began to catch on. But due to the drink's powerful reputation, the beans were sequestered away in monasteries and the formula for the drink kept secret, to be enjoyed only by the wealthiest of nobility.

In the early 1600s Italian traveller Antonio Carletti carried the beans tot he rest of Europe and for the first time, chocolate came to the common people.  By the 1700s, so-called "Chocolate Houses" were all the rage, as popular as coffee houses. In England, Charles 11 tried to close them down, calling them "hotbeds of sedition."

When chocolate first made its way to France, in the 18 th century, it was decried by authorities as a "dangerous drug."

The idea of mixing chocolate with milk did not come until the 18th century. Sir Hans Sloane, personal doctor to Queen Anne, invented the secret recipe and later sold it to the Cadbury brothers who made a fortune with new confections. It was a Dutch chemist, Johannes Van Houten, who developed the modern cocoa process, inventing a hydraulic press that would produce a fine cocoa powder. Thus began the era mass-produced chocolate.

The Screenwriter
Robert Nelson Jacobs delved into the mystical, Mayan history of chocolate as a symbol for power and pleasure in writing the screenplay for CHOCOLAT. Jacobs brings to his work his own literary background, having studied at the prestigious Iowa Writer's Workshop with John Updike, John Cheever, lan McEwan and Frank O'Connor. While at Iowa, Jacobs discovered his real interest was in spinning grand stories out of the stuff of human emotion - and he decided the best place to do that was on film.

Jacobs flew to Los Angeles --where the very first poster he hung on his wall was for Lasse