Chocolat (1989)

"Erotic, sophisticated, and distinctive" (L.A. Weekly), this enthralling depiction of a family's struggle during the final years of French colonialism in Africa takes a profound look at the intricate nature of relationships in a racist society. A story of exclusions, betrayals and agonizing compromises, this "remarkable and quietly devastating" (The Boston Globe) film is truly "extraordinary" (Interview). Curious and observant seven-year-old France spends her days amidst the paradise of her family's estate. But behind the household's exterior beauty lies growing hostility brought on by France's always-traveling father, her bored, frustrated mother – and ProtÃ(c)e, the noble, intelligent house "boy" who suffers the indignities of his status in silence. But when a plane makes an emergency landing nearby, bringing a motley collection of characters to the house, the heavenly façade soon begins to unravel. And a shocking explosion of rage, racism and forbidden passion threatens tear apart the family forever!

Slow movie

We bought this movie for our daughter's French class. We were disappointed that there weren't English subtitles for all of the dialogue - some of the words that were not the main character speaking were not translated. Also, the plot was very slow. August 17, 2008

Great visual, poor plot

Nothing much happens in this movie. The movie moves so slow, 106 minutes feel like 4 hours. Of the 106 minutes, 90 are merely scenes of the African landscape accompanied by music. Yes, it is beautiful but I'd rather have a storyline.

The social and sexual tensions are barely explored, they are barely grazed, merely hinted at. I fast forwarded through half the movie, hoping to stumble upon a good scene that never came. Slow moving, tediously boring and with a plot that is never explored. The racial relations are purely explored. We get more exploration of racial and sexual relations in "Growing Pains - The Complete First Season" PLUS a message of the week!
April 22, 2008

[3.5]--Your mine wonders a lot when you're bored.

I have recently seen Claire Denis's film "Beau Travial" and thought to give her debut film, "Chocolat" a shot. I have to admit that I was about to give up on this film because it was horrendously slow but stuck it through because I understood her intentions of this film. Set in the Cameroons in West Africa in the 1950s this film is told from the perspective of an adult returning to her childhood home in a foreign country. France Dalens (Mireille Perrier), a young woman traveling through Cameroon, recalls her childhood when her father (Francois Cluzet) was a government official in the French Cameroons and she had a loving friendship with the brooding manservant, Protée (Isaach de Bankolé). The heart of the film, however, revolves around France's mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi) and her love/hate relationship with Protée that is seething with unspoken sexual tension.

The household is divided into public and private spaces. The white families rooms are private and off limits to all except Protée who works in the house while the servants are forced to eat and shower outdoors, exposing their naked bronze bodies to the white family's gazes. It becomes clear when her husband Marc (François Cluzet) goes away on business that Aimée and Protée are sexually attracted to each other but the rules of society prevent it from being openly acknowledged. In one telling sequence, she invites him into her bedroom to help her put on her dress and the two stare at each other's image in the mirror with a defiant longing in their eyes, knowing that any interaction is taboo.

"Chocolat" is loosely autobiographical, adapted from the childhood memories of the director, and is slowly paced and as mysterious as the brooding isolation of the land on which it is filmed. Denis makes her point about the effects of colonialism without preaching or romanticizing the characters. There are no victims or oppressors, no simplistic good guys. As you watch this you will see Protée as a servant but he is also a protector. It is a sad fact that Protée is treated as a boy and not as a man, but Bankolé imbues his character with such dignity and stature that it lessens the pain. Because of its pace, many viewers may have to work hard to fully appreciate the film and Denis does not, in Roger Ebert's phrase, "coach our emotions". The truth of "Chocolat" lies in the gestures and glances that touch the silent longing of our heart.
May 22, 2007

Insomnia Cure

I've ended up with this movie three times while trying to rent the Juliette Binoche/Johnny Depp movie by the same name. My wife and I tried to watch it twice and finally succeeded, but it was only with the help of the fast-forward button (which we used to speed through 80% of the thing).

I agree with others who've said that the cinematography is nice, but there is no plot, no character development, no continuity -- nothing to carry you from one occasionally pretty bit of scenery to the next.

If there was any tension to the film, anything that inspired your curiosity and made you keep viewing, it was the burning question of when something was actually going to happen.

It was not that it didn't have potential, either. The film was ripe for explorations of racial issues and of the inner landscape of the white girl who'd returned to the Africa of her youth, of all the things that could go along with returning home after a long time away even, but none of that happened. The film just blundered from one place to the next without saying or revealing anything.

Before I saw the 4- and 5-star reviews here, I suspected that the only way the movie managed to stay in stock at the local video store was because it kept getting confused with the other Chocolat movie. Maybe that's why it got the same name, so people would be forced to watch it?

If you want great cinematography and a story that will hold your attention, go for something like "Out From Africa".

If, however, you have been unable to sleep and need an insomnia cure, this is the one for you.

This one is uncontested in the #1 position on my "dud" list.
October 11, 2006

Chocolat: The delectable treat on the horizon

I have seen Chocolat about five times over the last seven years. Chocolat: A reference to skin-tone or the sweet delicacy which despite the oppressive African heat does not lose its form or melt? I find the flavor in the story of France Dalens' visit to her childhood Cameroon intimate and rich as enjoying and sharing a chocolate. The story overflows with subtext messages and countless subtleties about life and experience outside the safe confines of one's country and culture.

One could say, and rightfully so, the acting and distant camera shoots are poor. I am not persuaded this is not Denis's clever design to compel viewers to squint for a better view of the horizon, to see not only with their eyes, but with their minds, too. Denis has limited the instrusiveness of her actors and permitted the story to tell itself as viewers each relate to its many human tales of race, the subtle power of initiation, influence, dominance, sexual frustration, innocence and precociousness.

Director Claire Denis has blended an absolutely masterful movie; wonderful and warm, yet sometimes arresting, double-take wonderment: "What was that about?" Denis preserves the beauty in the mystery of the covert even as viewers' are accosted by the crassness of the overt. Chocolat is a movie about the irrepressible, undeniable wants and needs of the human spirit, and their attainment, even while the forces that would discourage, dishearten and destroy people rage about like hyenas in the night.

I can count (although I believe the number increases every time I see the movie) the abundant number of subtle suggestive messages which transpire between adult and child character relationships. Chocolate, in its pure form is bitter, _ and sweet once refined and blended with sugar, and unless the viewer catches these message glimpses Chocolat seems a blotch of disconnectedness of bits and pieces. That said, do not look for or wait for a plot to develop.

France's parents live out their lives as servants of their native land France to influence, form and fashion black colonial Cameroon according to white Europeans. Their daughter France lives her life under their sometimes oblique oblivion while she, unlike her frustrated mother, is taken in, participates and indulges the influences of the house boy, Protee, much like her native France would have the black natives of colonial Cameroon do, also. Watch for this switching influence message shoot: One moment the little girl sneaks away from her nap in the scorching noonday heat to watch Protee at his chores, next shoot is her father's entourage as he leaves his family back home to make his adminstrative rounds.

The central thesis of Chocolat is spelled out for viewers in the form of a bedtime muse for the daughter by her father when he ventures a brief intellectual dissertation on the illusiveness of the horizon for a sleepy child: The closer you get to it the further it moves away. One might get to where the line once was, but it has moved away so that the line is never crossed, _ or so, that is the illusion.

Denis does not pontificate race, politics or moral themes. She has left these to "come out" in the easy, crass, vulgar, ulgy speech from no less than a wayward seminarian. His sexually vulgar affront of Aimee in the presence of Protee and the other servants raises the question: Whose sexual desires are really at issue here? Denis allows us a wisp of a much more discreet exchange between like minds as we "walk in" on a little snicker between France's father and the seminarian.

Chocolat is my ignorant perception and celluloid indulgence in a wonderful, beautiful, lush, verdant Africa. The movie, with its airport scene at the close and the music, always make me a bit sad. I am surprised to feel that way every time. I feel I am leaving Africa. I also know I will return, again. I will see Chocolat my only experience of Africa, again.

I rate Chocolat, on a one to ten scale, a ten, not as having all those technical, artistic elements which make up a "perfect" film, but for taking to the nth degree what it brings to the screen for entertainment and amusement of movie viewers.

I love Chocolat. July 14, 2006

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