Chocolat

FRENCH FLAPPER: Juliette Binoche, 73rd Annual Academy Awards, 2001
International critics first fell in love with "La Binoche," as she's affectionately called by the French press, when she played Daniel Day-Lewis' innocent young lover in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" ... more(1988). Since then, she's worked with numerous European masters, but didn't hit the Oscar jackpot until Anthony Minghella cast her as Ralph Fiennes' nurse in "The English Patient." Another nom came her way for "Chocolat," in which she co-starred with Johnny Depp -- whom she dubbed her "perfect chocolate -- dark, sumptuous and tasty." For the 2001 Oscars, Binoche chose a corset-front Gaultier gown, multistrand pearls, fingerless evening gloves and stiletto boots. Crowned by a coif of pressed curls, the French star evoked nothing so much as a fashionable '20s flapper. Queen of "Dynasty"-style trash-fashion, Joan Collins sniped that Binoche "was being strangled by a surfeit of faux-pearl necklaces," and dissed her "hideous Toulouse-Lautrec laced-up boots." (Paul Smith/Feature Flash/Retna Ltd.)