"The Cider House Rules" was suffused with emotion that was never cheapened into sentimentality; there was an irreducible toughness at its core, a respect for the characters as well as the audience. Combining a story that went for years with an unswerving focus on the people in front of the camera, Hallström achieved what might be termed intimate sweep.

"Chocolat" isn't the follow-up you'd hope for, but the care with which it has been made, its ability to provoke emotion without stooping to jerking tears, suggests that Hallström may be one of our best hopes for accessible, intelligent mainstream movies. The main problem here is that Hallström's source material, the novel by Joanne Harris, doesn't offer possibilities as rich as the narrative sprawl of Irving's imitation 19th century novel. The book doesn't even feel substantial enough to sustain its 200 or so pages; you get the point early on and, from the characters she introduces, predict exactly how she'll go about making it.

It's not hard to see why it would garner affection, though. A mixture of romance novel, mother-daughter weepie, travelogue and cookbook, the book pays just enough attention to sensual delight for readers to feel they're having a tastefully saucy good time. For predictable trash (with a literary veneer) Harris' novel is agreeable enough, something to pick up between "Travel and Leisure" and the latest Williams-Sonoma catalog.

Set in 1960, "Chocolat" tells the story of Vianne (Juliette Binoche), an unwed mother who, with her young daughter, Anouk (Victoire Thivosol), travels from town to town. Sometimes it's a whim that ignites her wanderlust, sometimes it's the disapproving locals. The latter are particularly restless in the rural French village where, at the movie's start, Vianne and Anouk turn up and rent out a patisserie that they turn into a gussied-up chocolate shop.

Vianne entices the locals by giving them free samples of what she intuits are their favorite candies. Pretty soon this proto-Godiva has become a hangout for the village outcasts, primarily Armande (Judi Dench), an old woman whose proper daughter (Carrie-Anne Moss) disapproves of her, and Josephine (Lena Olin) who leaves her abusive cafe-owner husband (Peter Stormare) to become Vianne's assistant. The shop has also attracted the attention of Reynaud (Alfred Molina), the town's mayor (its priest in the novel), who's appalled that Vianne is an unwed mother, that she doesn't go to church, that she has opened the shop during Lent and that her incitements to pleasure undermine the strictly observed morality that's the basis of his power.

From there, I think you can do the math. "Chocolat" is about how the locals come close to breaking Vianne but how her dedication to sensual delight eventually triumphs over all. It's the sort of cozy little ode to pleasure in which nothing much is really at stake, so the audience can leave congratulating itself on its liberality and sophistication. What turns me off is the combination of simple-mindedness and self-satisfaction.

That said, "Chocolat" could be a lot worse. Even the most potentially melodramatic scenes -- Armande's secret meetings with the grandson (Aurelien Parent Koenig) her daughter doesn't want her to see, or a moment of panic when Vianne fears that something terrible has happened to Anouk -- achieve their effects without putting the screws to the audience. You can dislike the material and still feel respect for Hallström's restraint, for the deftness with which he handles the interactions of the various characters.

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