Chocolat (1988)

Directed by Claire Denis. Written by Jean-Pol Fargeau and Claire Denis

With a sensory immersion that’ll define her, Claire Denis prods memory’s scar tissue with Chocolat, the story of a young White girl’s childhood in Cameroon, where she lives as the daughter of a French military officer commanding a region of the colonized country. 

Before we slip into the past, however, a current day framing device: We meet France, now a woman, seated on a rock at the treeline of a beach. She’s got headphones on, deaf to the sound of the surf, and she’s clutching herself, eyeing the country with apprehension. At the water’s edge, a Black man and his son lie, at ease in the shallows. Denis shows the water lapping over them, lying there with their eyes closed. France looks down at the sand on her feet, brushing it off as if to suggest discomfort. 

The man and his son will later offer France a ride, and on the road the memories wash over her. We’re taken straight back to her life at hip-height, a child blind to the larger social structures that govern her and those around her. Alongside her is Protée, a house servant and her only friend. Protée’s entrusted with both France and her mother Aimée when the commandant is on the road, and that comes with both privilege and pressure. It’s only in hindsight France realizes how much. 

With young France as our entrypoint, Denis wants to keep a certain distance as if to emulate the emotional blindside. France isn’t an inquisitive child that interrogates her surroundings, and we become quiet observers as well, taking the position of an older France reading into what she saw. Much of Chocolat happens in the silences between people and the charged looks they share. Sparks do fly but the simmering tension of the underlying power structures is what the movie rides on. 

It’s a cerebral pleasure that asks a lot of its central duo Isaach De Bankolé, who plays Protée, and Guilia Boschi, who plays France’s mother Aimée. De Bankolé is mesmerizing as the stoic servant who seems to carry Cameroon’s history and its current social situation on its shoulders with a fierce determination. Boschi, always on edge, seems determined to keep a distance to it all. Something unspoken passes between them, the only thing that seems able to inspire feeling.

Chocolat is a quietly powerful evocation of macroesocial tensions expressed through the intimately personal. Loud proclamations are foregone in favor of still realizations that seem to materialize in the stifling hot air, as France, Aimée, her husband Marc, Protée and the assortment of guests at the house play out this national standoff. Denis portrays it all with a delicate sensibility that nonetheless makes the culmination feel like a tidal wave and you’re swept off your feet in recognition of the skewed reality at work here and the havoc it can wreak. 

Denis has a touch for the sensuous, and it’s already on display here. Stifling heat, cool water, soft skin, rough earth, and coarse touches make up a cinematic language that’s a pleasure to experience on its own, but it bolsters this sense of the intimate because the body’s engaged as much as the mind is. Think of all the movies that ask their actors and scripts to convey whether something is painful, hot, or cold, and you realize staring at an agonized face isn’t nearly as effective as convincing you of its truth as seared skin is. 

Claire Denis is equally capable of showing us the pain that doesn’t readily present itself, and she immediately proves herself a standout filmmaker with Chocolat, a sophisticated and sensitive exploration of colonialism’s pernicious effects and the immensely personal experience thereof. While she’ll grow to be an even more proactive and assertive director, Denis’ feature debut shows promising writing and mature direction by not being afraid to go at its own pace, and show what it wants to show.