Lessons in Chocolate (2007) [N/A]

Featuring:
Luca Argentero, Violante Placido, Neri Marcorè

Written by:
Fabio Bonifacci
Christian Poli

Directed by:
Claudio Cupellini


Release Date:
November 23, 2007

Original Title:
Lessons in Chocolate

Alternate Titles:
Шоколадні поцілунки
초콜릿 레슨

Genres:
Comedy

Production Companies:
Cattleya

Production Countries:
Italy

Ratings / Certifications:
IT: T 

Runtime: 99

Mattia, a building contractor on a promising career path, is about to close the biggest deal of his professional life, when his illegally-hired worker Kamal falls off some scaffolding, suffers a severe break and threatens to sue and press charges against Mattia unless... Unless Mattia takes his place in an advanced course for pastry makers! This is the reason Kamal came to Italy from his native Egypt and that will allow him to realize his dream of opening his own pastry shop... Mattia has no choice but to take Kamal’s place in the school and pretend to be him. Among laughs and mouth-watering recipes, Mattia will discover a way to bring his and Kamal's disparate cultures together.

Mattia, a 32 year old building contractor in Perugia has lots of style, nice suits, nice car, gorgeous looking girlfriend but behind this facade is cutting corners with site safety and hiring immigrant workers. Taking to the golf course hoping to meet wealthy, upmarket clients he meets a doctor who offers him a contract to build a luxurious weekend getaway but not one Euro above 300,000 will he pay. Meantime back on site to save 12,000 euros in scaffolding he has illegally-hired worker Kamal working on a roof without any safety nets and Kamal falls from the roof, finishing up in hospital with his entire upper body in plaster. Kamal unknown to Mattia has won a position in a chocolate making competition at a nearby factory who are celebrating their centenary of operation. Before leaving Egypt, Kamal was a pastry cook in Egypt. By doing the chocolate course he hopes to gain a diploma to start a new career in Italy as a chocolate maker. First prize is enough money to start his own business. So Mattia has a choic;face the police or stand in for Kamal at the advanced chocolate making course. Egyptian laborer versus trendy Italian businessman. So goodbye pony tail, hello perm, goodbye smart phone and clothes. In the class are: a middle aged woman, a man whose father owns 4 pastry shops and the beautiful, passionate Cecilia, whose love life is littered with liars. Feeling sorry for our stand in Kamal she offers to coach Mattia, after hours, to improve his chocolate making. Mattia leads a double life of Egyptian by day, homework and contractor by day and night transforming in the process from being self centred to finding love and life at the same time.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Video

Click each video panel to show or hide.

Although TheMovieDB might provide a key to a YouTube video, there is no guarantee that the video might be present at YouTube.

Rankings and Honors

Lessons in Chocolate (2007) on IMDb
Internet Movie Database 6.1/10
Awards Won: 4 wins & 10 nominations

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.