Tagline: Temptation comes in many forms.
Blood and Chocolate is based on Annette Curtis Klause’s novel about a teenage werewolf who has spent her life trying to hide the fact that she is part wolf. She must choose between her love for a human and her family after her relationship with a visiting American threatens to expose her secret.
The story takes place in modern day Bucharest and tells the tale of nineteen year old Vivian Gandillon (Bruckner), who has spent her life on the run from the truth… that she is a werewolf. When her affections for a visiting American artist threaten to expose her family’s secret society, she must choose between her love for an outsider and betraying the secret vows of her family.
Ten years ago, in the remote mountains of Colorado, a young girl watched helplessly as her family was murdered by a pack of angry men for the secret they carried in their blood. She survived by running into the woods, and changing into something the hunters could never find… a wolf. Now, though she lives half a world away, Vivian Gandillon (Agnes Bruckner) is still running.
Living in relative safety in Bucharest, Vivian spends her days working at a chocolate shop and nights trawling the city’s underground clubs, fending off the reckless antics of her cousin Rafe (Bryan Dick) and his gang of delinquents he calls “The Five.” But only when she’s running through the woods around the city does Vivian feel truly free… though whatever she’s chasing seems continually to elude her.
Aiden Galvin (Hugh Dancy) is an artist researching Bucharest’s ancient art and relics for his next graphic novel based on the mythology of the loup garoux – shapeshifters whose power to change effortlessly into the forms of both human and wolf was once considered holy among men.
Wrestling demons of his own, Aiden hopes to explore the inner lives of these outsiders that he believes were persecuted to extinction – labeled monsters, murderers, werewolves. They achieved what he lacks – transcendence, the ability to change what they are. What he doesn’t know is that the loup garoux are not only very real, they’re far from extinct.
Others may have secrets but none as extraordinary as hers, for Vivian is among the last of her kind, leading a tenuous existence under the protection and control of Gabriel (Olivier Martinez), the powerful and enigmatic leader of one of the last packs of loux garoux on earth. After their brief exchange in the church, Aiden can’t get Vivian out of his mind, nor can she forget him. He pursues her until she relents and begins to see him, but she can’t bring herself to tell him the truth – and lives in fear of showing him what she really is. If she bleeds, her eyes will betray her as a loup garoux. And what’s worse: her future, and who she falls in love with, is already predetermined.
To keep their kind from being hunted to extinction, Gabriel holds them to strict laws. One is that he must take a new bride every seven years, and Vivian has been prophesied to be his next. The other is that the pack must hunt as one or not at all. It is the very key to their survival. Chased from the soil of every continent, only in Bucharest – where once a Magyar prince was said to have loup garoux blood – have they found sanctuary.
About the Production
“In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.” — Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Werewolves have been known by various names – shapeshifters, succubi, demons… and loup garoux. An outgrowth of mythology as old as civilization itself, tales of werewolves and shapeshifters have cropped up around disappearances, murders, violence and death throughout history. “They express fear of the unknown,” notes director Katja von Garnier, “but more than that, they express fear of the unknown within the known – the hidden predator living undetected amongst humanity, the hidden animal within the man.”
“I think that everybody is fascinated by them,” says cast-member Bryan Dick. “I don’t think there’s a person who has not watched a werewolf film or been interested in the fantasy of shapeshifters and that kind of moonlight world. It’s very appealing and it’s also very sexy.”
“If you examine most of the myths, particularly the myths we consider the horror myths — werewolves, vampires — it probably is an expression of the fact that we all potentially have some sort of monster within us, something that doesn’t fit with the civilized world,” adds cast-member Hugh Dancy.
The story of “Blood and Chocolate” explores this idea through a star-crossed love story. “It really is about these people just trying to fit in and survive in the modern civilized world,” says Agnes Bruckner. “Hopefully we haven’t done an injustice to the myths as they stand; we’ve just reinvented them and given them a new twist.”
Bruckner plays Vivian Gandillon, a headstrong young woman who “comes from a long line of leaders,” says Bruckner. “Her pack has plans for Vivian, but her blood has always told her not to go their way. She lives among them for protection and because they took her in after her family was slaughtered, but she is not exactly one of them.”
This pack of loup garoux is led by Gabriel, who despite his youthful appearance is perhaps as ancient as he is powerful. Close to extinction, the werewolves must maintain their close-knit ways to persist beneath humanity’s detection. “Gabriel’s driving concern is the survival and unity of the pack,” says producer Hawk Koch.
“Having already witnessed what happened to those who strayed, such as Vivian’s family – who relocated to Colorado only to be tracked and murdered by the hunters who discovered their identity – Gabriel will do anything in his power to ensure the survival of his loup garoux in Romania.”
Vivian is marked for marriage to Gabriel because he can see plainly her urge to stray away from the pack. “She’s not from the pack,” says Martinez. “She was raised by our pack but she doesn’t really belong to it. She doesn’t think that she belongs to any kind of society. She’s free. And Gabriel knows that if Vivian leaves the pack, it’s going to be the beginning of the end. It would be anarchy and would create an example, which would endanger the unity that has kept them alive.”
As is their custom, every seven years the leader of the pack picks a new mate. This time Gabriel picks Vivian. “She represents a new point of view about the rules and the traditions and my character is sticking with tradition because he thinks this is the only way to survive,” Martinez explains. “Gabriel thinks that she is betraying the cause by resisting. He witnessed the old way and believes that the loup garoux have to kill or be killed.”
Vivian lives with her Aunt Astrid (Katja Riemann), one of Gabriel’s former mates, who is still heartbroken that he moved on after their affair. “The ways of the pack are not always fair,” says Riemann. This notion is embodied by Astrid, who bore Gabriel’s child – Rafe (Bryan Dick). Though Vivian is forced to be among them, she has nothing but contempt for Rafe and his friends, “The Five,” who insist on breaking the one cardinal rule devised to keep them all safe from humans: “hunt as a pack or not at all.”
Dick says, “The Five are the new generation of the wolf pack and as such they pay little regard to the rules. They bend them whereas Rafe breaks them entirely. I think that’s what the film’s about, ultimately. It’s about an exiled community which is struggling to keep together a code of conduct which doesn’t quite work.”
Once a month Gabriel sanctions the pack’s killing of a human in the form of a ritualistic hunt held in the Romanian forest under the auspices of the full moon. Vivian attends, but not for the hunt. “It’s not the actual kill,” says Bruckner. “It’s the running she craves, and the werewolf side it brings out. It’s always in her and she loves that side of herself but she doesn’t want to show it in everyday life.”
“Vivian resents and resists the animal part of herself,” adds von Garnier. “She dislikes the current regime of the loup garoux that’s based on hatred and revenge.”
Vivian’s unexpected encounter with the young American artist Aiden throws a wrench in Gabriel’s plans for her. Fascinated with the legends of loup garoux, Aiden has come to Bucharest to research the legends at their nexus. “Vivian is surprised by Aiden’s passion for wolves and loup garoux,” says von Garnier.
Although their backgrounds are wildly divergent, Vivian and Aiden do have one thing in common: they are both on the run from familial expectations. “Aidan is a guy who is also running from something in the same way that Vivian is,” says Hugh Dancy.
“She has this terrible past – she lost her family – and she’s not necessarily comfortable with the community she’s with now. Aidan is also on the run from something. He has a bit of mystery and secrets from his own past, which he’s withholding.”
“Vivian is going through a point where she wants to be human but also likes the wolf side of her, but not the violence associated with it,” adds Bruckner. “When she meets Aiden, she sees herself in him a little bit – the side that she really loves. It draws her to him.”
When Gabriel learns of Vivian’s interest in a human – in his eyes the ultimate betrayal of the pack – he dispatches Rafe to threaten Aiden into leaving both Bucharest and Vivian behind. Despite Rafe’s supernatural advantages, Aiden surprisingly proves himself capable of taking on a loup garou. “He may be an artist, but when a wolf jumps on him he can take care of himself,” Dancy says.
But his resistance only urges Gabriel to more extreme measures. As Vivian and Aiden begin to fall in love, the shadow of her heritage edges ever closer. “Vivian knows that whatever love develops between them will have to be short-lived,” says Bruckner. “Every moment Aiden spends with her not only throw the pack into chaos, it puts his life, and hers, in great danger.”
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Blood and Chocolate (2007)
Directed by: Katja von Garnier
Starring: Agnes Bruckner, Hugh Dancy, Olivier Martinez, Katja Riemann, Bryan Dick, Chris Geere, Tom Harper, John Kerr, Jack Wilson, Vitalie Ursu, Kata Dobó
Screenplay by: Ehren Kruger
Production Design by: Kevin Phipps
Cinematography by: Michael Grady
Film Editing by: Emma E. Hickox, Martin Walsh
Costume Design by: Ioana Alboiu, Elisabetta Beraldo
Set Decoration by: Peter Walpole
Art Direction by: Vraciu Eduard Daniel, Adam O’Neill, Mihnea Vieru, Vlad Vieru
Music by: Reinhold Heil Johnny Klimek
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence / terror, sexuality, substance abuse.
Distributed by: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Release Date: January 26, 2007
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