Chocolat
1989
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| Orion Classics | Release Date: May 1, 1989 |
Starring:
Emmanuelle Chaulet, François Cluzet, Giulia Boschi, Isaach De Bankolé, Jacques Denis, Jean Bediebe, Jean-Claude Adelin, Jean-Quentin Châtelain, Kenneth Cranham, Laurent Arnal
Summary:
A French woman returns to her childhood home in Cameroon - formerly a colonial outpost - where she's flooded by memories, particularly of Protée, her servant.
Chocolat is a film of infinite delicacy. It is not one of those steamy melodramatic interracial romances where love conquers all. It is a movie about the rules and conventions of a racist society and how two intelligent adults, one black, one white, use their mutual sexual attraction as a battleground on which, very subtly, to taunt each other.
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It’s astonishing how early on in her career Denis had a handle on her distinct brand of visual composition. Hers is a genius for showing not telling, for laying out surfaces that are rich with implication and for conducting details until there is a heady picture that is minutely observant with a sweep that reaches from heaven to hell.
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Its interrogation of cross-cultural dysfunction and the colonialist legacy notwithstanding, Chocolat's foremost pleasures are visceral. Denis, even at this early stage, already seems attuned to film's power to suggest and seduce. Her debut emanates the effortless sensuality and sinewy elegance that have come to mark her movies, making it a sterling introduction to her cinema of sensation.
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Moving like a dream that explodes into reality, Chocolat is blessed with superb acting, especially by its star, the African-born Bankole. His quiet eloquence and suppressed passion express the human cost of an unjust political system. [27 Mar 1989, p.68]
Languidly paced yet not at all slow, Chocolat is a last, lingering, affectionate look at a comfortable, convenient life that may have been more a mirage than a memory. [12 May 1989, p.I13]
First-time director Claire Denis (a Frenchwoman who lived in Africa as a child) wants us to know that colonialism is a bad thing. Would anyone care to argue the point? Like German director Wim Wenders (with whom she worked on Wings of Desire), Denis achieves some ravishing images but is committed to using a deadeningly static camera. [30 Mar 1990, p.16]
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