Or, that movie where sexy werewolves don’t translate to the silver screen.
Many of you will already be familiar with Annette Curtis Klause’s werewolf novel Blood and Chocolate. What you may not know is that Klause’s sexy story was adapted into a film in 2007 — an adaptation so terrible, it is rivalled only by the 2004 adaptation of Ella Enchanted. Blood and Chocolate the movie may share a title and a theme with the novel it’s based on, but that is just about where the similarities end, and following in the footsteps of most film adaptations of beloved books, it’s not an improvement on the story. At all.
Blood and Chocolate (the novel) tells the story of Vivian Gandillon, a teenage werewolf living with her kind in West Virginia. When the locals catch on, they come after Vivian and the pack, setting their home on fire and killing Vivian’s father in the process. The novel opens after they have moved to the suburbs of Maryland to regroup. But the bloodlust of her packmates and the death of her father leave Vivian questioning their violent way of life. Is she a human or is she a monster? Does she have a choice?
In this way, Klause’s book is typical of many YA novels: it tells the story of a girl, insecure in her identity, seeking validation. Vivian’s search for life outside the pack leads her to a sensitive human boy named Aiden.[1] Vivian begins to fall in love with Aiden— just as Gabriel, her sexy, motorcycle-riding packmate, starts to take an interest in her. Gabriel’s advances only serve to strengthen her determination to remain with the kind and gentle Aiden.
But Vivian is strained in her new relationship. As her mother tells her, “You could do better…. You could have Gabriel — someone you can be yourself with.” As much as Vivian wants to, she can’t be her true self with Aiden. Her mother warns her not to tell Aiden the pack’s secret. If she does, she will be cast out of the pack. “How would you like to lose everyone you care about and be alone in the world?”
Ignoring her mother, Vivian chooses to follow her heart. She exposes herself to Aiden, believing he loves her enough to accept her. But Aiden is terrified when Vivian transforms into a wolf in front of his eyes — so terrified, in fact, that he tries to kill her.
Rejected by Aiden, Vivian finds herself falling for the undeniably sexy Gabriel. As Vivian’s mother predicted, Gabriel accepts Vivian for who she is. She doesn’t need to give up everyone she loves to be with him. The relationship with Gabriel reaffirms Vivian’s identity, concluding the novel with a strong assertion of her self-confidence.
Blood and Chocolate the film departs from the novel and is more akin to the high romance found in the Twilight series. The film places the werewolf pack in far-off Romania. The clan has lived in secret in Bucharest for decades by adhering to a strict set of rules — rules which include things like letting the alpha male take a new mate every seven years.[2]
The werewolf pack in the film emerges as a much more violent collective than Klause originally envisioned, and Vivian’s place is much more circumscribed. The male werewolves keep her in check with a stream of constant mental and emotional abuse. When the sadistic misogynist Gabriel (a far cry from Klause’s motorcycle-riding hunk) sets his sights on Vivian as his next mate, she begins to fight against all the things she dislikes about their way of life.
Enter Aiden, the sensitive artist, a tourist in Romania. When Aiden gets pulled into Gabriel’s plans for Vivian, Aiden and Vivian join together to destroy the pack. The story ends in a fiery climax in a warehouse on the outskirts of Bucharest when Vivian kills Gabriel just as he is about to pounce on Aiden. The warehouse then goes up in flames,[3] and the young lovers flee. The film ends as they are driving out of the city on their way to — “Paris?” Aiden suggests — the city of love.
Much like Stephanie Meyer’s saga, the end of Blood and Chocolate the film promotes the sort of high-stakes romance that has become synonymous with the supernatural genre.[4] The werewolf runs off with the human, forsaking her life, her friends, and her home.[5] It is very similar to Bella’s desire to become a vampire so that she can be with Edward forever — a decision that Bella barely thinks about, even though Edward reminds her many times that becoming a vampire means leaving her parents, her friends, and her very life itself.
It is very romantic of course to think about sacrificing everything you know to be with the one you love — but it’s not very practical, nor is it a very healthy message for young women. Attaching your identity to and basing your life around a significant other really only works in fiction (and even then it’s iffy). Nobody likes those friends who constantly drop everything to be with their boyfriends, and a girl who routinely ditches her friends while she’s dating probably won’t have any more friends when she’s not. So I commend Annette Curtis Klause for her healthy (and incredibly sexy) portrayal of teenage relationships, because it’s something we need to see more of. If only the movie folks could have gotten it right too.
Works Cited
Blood and Chocolate. Dir. Katja von Garnier. Perf. Agnes Bruckner, Hugh Dancy, and Olivier Martinez. MGM, 2007. DVD.
Klause, Annette Curtis. Blood and Chocolate. New York: Laurel-Leaf Books, 1997.
1 Aiden is a throwback to the hippie era and wears colourful, floral blouses and drives a beat-up VW bug. Sensitive doesn’t even begin to cover it.
2 Because, you know, that sort of thing is really important to their survival as an underground supernatural community.
3 A fire which begins when Aiden pours alcohol on several of Gabriel’s werewolf cronies and sets a match to them. Several alcohol bottles were shattered when the werewolves were shooting at Aiden, spilling alcohol on the floor. The spilled alcohol catches fire as the burning werewolves writhe in it, and the flames spread to the rest of the warehouse, causing the whole building to blow up. All from a tiny little baby splash of liquor on the floor….
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