Romance and Becoming Free: A Response to AC CP Charlotte Kuchinsky's "Reviewing the Film Blood and Chocolate."

Blood and Chocolate, an Eastern European romantic werewolf movie, originally appealed to me mostly because I thought they were playing an Evanescence song in the previews. (Evanescence is a beautiful combination of heavy metal and melodic vocals.) The song from the previews isn't even in the movie, but it still turned out to be a pretty good story of ill-fated love. I read one negative review of it on AC, and then another fairly positive one by Charlotte Kuchinsky, and decided to respond.

"When we are children, we believe the world is full of magic. We believe in myths and legends, and that destiny awaits. That is the world I remember, and the one I wish I'd never known." So says the gorgeous and forlorn damsel Vivian as the film opens and we see the losses she experienced in her childhood.

At a pastoral home in the American countryside, Vivian (Agnes Brucker) is making snow angels and playing with her siblings when a group of hunters comes and starts murdering her family. She alone escapes by running into the woods, apparently turning into a very pretty white wolf and running away with a couple of other wolves.

The film cuts to twenty years later in Romania (really Bulgaria), and Vivian is jogging in the streets of the city. Vivian is a non-violent, Ghandi-like loup garou, which is the French name for werewolf. She lives for "the running," "the being free," not the killing of innocent humans. She does not participate in any of the wolf hunting games, although she is actually faster and stronger than many of the others. She is a white wolf, a symbol of her innocence and purity.

By the way, the main cast is as follows:

Agnes Brucker is Vivian (the Juliet character if you will) - the female lead, a beautiful, white werewolf. She must hide her true identity from Aiden (the Romeo character), who falls for her on first sight, and whom she comes to love too. If he finds out that she is a loup garou (a Capulet), the pack of "Capulets" will kill him.