The Master Chocolatier, v1: “The Boutique” – Chocolate and Belgium!

If someone in Belgium were to write a Lifetime television movie, this would be that.

Mix a romance in with a crime story with a love triangle and a surprise plot twist near the end. That’s “The Master Chocolatier.”

It’s mindless, harmless “drama.”

Dip Into the Credits

A Plot with Chocolate Trappings

Alexis is passionate about chocolate. It’s all he can think about. It’s what he’s trained his whole life to be: a chocolatier.

He’s confident in the kitchen, but a little shy and awkward, socially.

He works for one of the big name chocolatiers in Brussels, but resents the way profits and credits are split. His boss, Mr. Perdreaux, takes all the credit and glory without ever giving an ounce of credit to anyone else. He’s also not terribly nice to his employees.

Eventually, things come to a head and Alexis strikes out on his own. Clemence, a dear life-long friend of his — he’d like it to be closer — has a friend who can bankroll him to open his own place. And so a business plan is hatched. But at what cost?

The Trouble With Ben

Oh, and did I mention that that friend of a friend, Ben, is in debt to a local tough guy who’s already pounded him once with the brass knuckles and is threatening him worse if he can’t pay back the money he owes this time?

Yeah, that’s where things start to go a little weird for me. Ben is the weak link in this story. He’s the high point of the drama and conflict, but he’s the one that makes everyone else look stupid for ignoring so much stuff around them.

Clemence trusts Ben because, uhm, they met on a club dance floor once and he’s very charismatic? Alexis hates Ben but needs the money and doesn’t question it too much.

Ben is completely unlikable. There are people who are straightforward and honest with you (perhaps to a fault), but then there are guys like Ben, who come across as slick shysters who’d scam the last penny from your grandmother for kicks.

There’s not enough in the script early on to make Ben a redeemable character, or even a believable one. He talks a good game, but there’s not too much in there until near the end that leads me to believe he knows anything about business.

The Romance of Chocolates

One of the interesting points of the book is Alexis’ affection for his friend from school, Clemence. They’ve never dated, but it’s clear Alexis wishes they had. He’s just painfully shy and doesn’t want to ruin a perfectly good friendship.

At the same time, there’s another woman working in the chocolate kitchen with him who might just be of interest to him — and he to her.

Suddenly, we have both a “Will He or Won’t He?” situation and a love triangle. This is where the book turns into the Lifetime movie. I like the way it’s handled in the first half of the book. In the second half, though, there’s one revelation that comes a bit crazily out of left field. The ramifications of it will have to wait for the second volume, though…

What I Did Like

I like looking behind the scenes at the world of chocolate in Belgium. It’s a big thing there, obviously, and the creators of the book clearly did their research. There’s a multi-page feature at the end of the book that gives a little history into the world of chocolate and how it’s made and sold today. It includes pictures of the creators behind the scenes at a chocolatier’s kitchen, learning how it all comes together.

It doesn’t overwhelm the story. There are some details about chocolate making included in the story, particularly early on, to establish Alexis as an authority. The rest of the book doesn’t get caught up on it. It’s not all recipes and machinery. The creators used their research well to inform the story without overwhelming it or turning it into a travelogue.

Most of all, this is not the typical setting for any kind of comic I’ve ever read, so that’s new and interesting.

Second, the book is set in Belgium and it takes a few moments here and there to exploit that, including beautiful scenes of the city at night as a character is walking past the classic ornate buildings under light.

And then, there’s the Zinneke-Pis. I didn’t know that was a thing. It’s relatively new. You know about the statue of the peeing boy in Brussels? (Don’t forget the times they dressed the statue up as Asterix and Obelix!)

This is the dog version of that. It’s real, and it’s included in this book.

The Art of Chocolate

Chetville’s art works on this kind of story. This is a fairly straightforward drama piece, so having a realistic artist makes sense. You don’t need the animated antics of a Franquin or an Uderzo here. You want this to look like a basic cable television movie.

Chetville tells the story well. The angles he chooses work, and the page designs and layouts are easy to follow. The characters easily differentiated, while having personal fashion senses and general body language.

This looks closer to one of those historical fiction books set in Ancient Rome than a more stylistic “cartoony” book like “Glorious Summers.”

There are some inconsistencies in the art. I noticed some issues where anatomical proportions slipped here and there, particularly with the size of hands in specific panels looking painfully small.

And some characters just look stiff, but that’s always a problem when the art gets this realistic. You add realism, but you lose some of the life in the characters along the way. I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head who blends the two together well.

The Lettering

I love this font — it may be my favorite part of the book. It feels like an old school comic book lettering font. It’s lively and blocky and works well in this context. It reminds me of Steve Lieber’s hand lettering style, of all things.

If I were lettering comics, I’d use this font all the time.

I also like the balloons. They’re not perfect circles, and they knock out the panel borders when they butt up against them. It’s a very John Workman-esque touch.

Even more impressive, the translation by Montana Kane fits the words in each balloon with plenty of room. Occasionally, there’s a little extra white space, but I can deal with that. They rarely get crowded, though, and if I didn’t know this book was translated from the French, I never would have guessed this is the work of someone fitting a translated scripts into pre-existing balloons. (There are a couple balloons where the font size suddenly shrinks to fit everything in, but that’s few and far between.)

But —

— yes, there always has to be a but, doesn’t there? —

— I don’t like the tails. I don’t like their shape and I don’t like the way they overlap the balloons and push inside the balloon. I like the neat and clean look of one line making up both the balloon and tail. I’m old-fashioned that way, I guess, but there are other styles I’ve seen that work well. This one doesn’t.

Also, the tail shapes are just odd. I like the ones that zig zag around, but the straight stumpy tails just look too fat and blobby to me.

Just to end things on a nicer note: When the deaf character is speaking through her sign language, the word balloons point to her hands. Nice touch. (I should note that the co-writer on this book, Benedicte Gourdon, is a psychologist for the deaf as her day job.)

Recommended?

That’s a strong word, “recommended.” Look, if you like Lifetime movies without the woman in direct peril kind of thing, you might like this. It’s not a rom-com. It’s a romance story, really, with beautiful Belgian backdrops and an oddly tacked on crime world thing.

But there’s so much chocolate!

— 2019.025 —

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