Chocolat

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. Read full review

The entire cast is superb, but special praise should go to De Bankole for his portrait of a life that simply isn't seen by those who have the greatest influence on it. It's difficult to imagine a more powerful and artfully assembled film about the limbo of those suspended between countries - or the suffering of those whose country is not entirely their own. [29 Mar 1990, p.C5]

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. Read full review

Miss Denis's mastery of film-making technology, which is something that can be learned, is equaled by her splendid control of narrative, a more elusive talent. She is astonishing. There are no dark corners in the story. Everything that happens is vivid and clear, though subject to the kind of speculation that tantalizes and rewards. Read full review

Denis quickly immerses us in her voluptuous, allusive mode of storytelling. Read full review

Watching Claire Denis' Chocolat, you feel as if your senses have been quickened, reawakened. The movie is like sex for the eyes -- it's ravishing in a way that goes straight into your blood. Read full review

Suffused with sunlit, sensual images, Chocolat feels rather than finds out, implies rather than blurts out. Like an odd collection of old-time photographs, it seems to hold enigmatic truths -- ones that can't be expressed but that you have an instinctive understanding for nonetheless. Read full review

In the crowded landscape of anti-imperial and anti-colonial film, Claire Denis' Chocolat is a standout. Never raising its voice, avoiding the usual didacticism, Denis brings subtlety, sensitivity and an uncommonly clear personal vision to her memories of colonialism in Africa, where she spent her youth. [31 Mar 1989, p.34]

Chocolat is as beautiful as it is solemn. It's a meditation on memory and on the nature of innocence in the face of great, irresistible change, but its glory is in the quiet development of its several characters. [12 May 1989, p.5]

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]

In her amazingly assured debut, Clare Denis draws out the implications of the action with great subtlety. She makes the most of the exotic location, and elicits strong performances from all her cast. Read full review

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. Read full review

Director Claire Denis has attempted a meditative mood piece on the intertwined themes of colonialism and forbidden love. It's difficult, in fact, to tell which is the metaphor for which. But while the movie's tone is impeccably muted, and though its horizontally composed images are striking, and its dramatic rhythms are subtle and sure, there is something gnawingly simplistic in the conception. [12 May 1989, p.A]

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]

Though Chocolat never fulfills the plot it promises, Denis makes many low-key but powerful observations about racism and the lines it can draw between us. [12 Aug 1989, p.4D]

The episodic flow tends to set up an occasional self-consciousness and air of portent about the film’s apparent lack of pretension. Read full review

Chocolat is a film of some subtlety. It has good, even memorable moments to it, and it’s beautiful looking. It is very, very, very French, which may or may not be your cup of chocolat. It is also a suffocatingly precious film, enough to try the patience of an oyster, and one that primly refuses to detonate the mounting numbers of erotic situations it sets up. Read full review

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]