''Chocolat'' is a 1988 French

period drama A historical drama (also period drama, costume drama, and period piece) is a work set in a past time period, usually used in the context of film and television. Historical drama includes historical fiction and romance film, romances, adventure f ...

film written and directed by

Claire Denis Claire Denis (; born 21 April 1946) is a French film director and screenwriter. Her feature film ''Beau Travail'' (1999) has been called one of the greatest films of the 1990s, as well as of all time. Other acclaimed works include '' Trouble Ev ...

in her directorial debut that follows a young girl who lives with her family in French Cameroon. Marc and Aimée Dalens (

François Cluzet François Cluzet (born 21 September 1955) is a French film and theatre actor. Cluzet has collaborated with many important European and American directors, including Claude Chabrol, Bertrand Tavernier, Claire Denis, Agnieszka Holland, Robert A ...

and Giulia Boschi) play the parents of protagonist France (Cécile Ducasse), who befriends Protée ( Isaach de Bankolé), a Cameroonian who is the family's household servant. The film was entered into the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

An adult woman named France walks down a road toward Douala, Cameroon. She is picked up by William J. Park ( Emmet Judson Williamson), an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

who has moved to Africa and is driving to Limbe with his son. As they ride, France's mind drifts and we see her as a young girl in Mindif, French Cameroon in 1957, where her father was a colonial administrator. The story is told through the eyes of young France, showing her friendship with the "houseboy," Protée, as well the sexual tension between him and her young and beautiful mother, Aimée. The conflict of the film comes from the discomfort created as France and her mother attempt to move past the established boundaries between themselves and the native Africans. This is brought to a head through Luc Segalen ( Jean-Claude Adelin), a Western drifter who stays with the Dalens family after a small aircraft crashes nearby. He acknowledges Aimée's attraction to Protée in the presence of other black servants. This later results in a fight between Luc and Protée, which Protée wins. During the fight, Aimée sits nearby, unseen by the two. She attempts to seduce Protée after Luc has left but he rejects her advance. Aimée consequently asks her husband to remove him from the house. Protée is moved from his in-house job to working outdoors in the garage as a mechanic. The title ''Chocolat'' (, "

chocolate Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec ci ...

") comes from the 1950s slang meaning "to be cheated," and thus refers to the status in French Cameroon of being black and being cheated; it is also an allusion to Protée's dark-brown skin and the racial fetishism of Africans by Europeans. Towards the end of the film, France's father reveals a central theme of the film as he explains to her what the

horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

is. He tells her that it is a line that is there but not there, a symbol for the boundaries that exist in the country between rich and poor, master and servant, white and black, coloniser and colonised, male and female; a line that is always visible but impossible to approach or pass.

Cast

* Isaach de Bankolé as Protée * Giulia Boschi as Aimée Dalens *

as Marc Dalens * Cécile Ducasse as France Dalens, as a girl * Mireille Perrier as France Dalens, as a woman * Jean-Claude Adelin as Luc * Laurent Arnal as Machinard * Jean Bediebe as Prosper * Didier Flamand as Captain Védrine * Jean-Quentin Châtelain as Courbassol * Emmanuelle Chaulet as Mireille Machinard * Kenneth Cranham as Jonathan Boothby * Jacques Denis as Joseph Delpich * Clementine Essono as Marie-Jeanne * Essindi Mindja as Blaise Le pic de Mindif

Soundtrack

The soundtrack, performed and recorded by Abdullah Ibrahim, was released in 1988 as '' Mindif''.

References

External links

*
Film guide & resources for Culture & Literature of Africa course
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chocolat (1988 Film) 1988 films 1980s adventure drama films Cameroonian drama films Films set in Cameroon Films set in 1957 1980s French-language films French drama films Films directed by Claire Denis Films set in the French colonial empire 1988 directorial debut films 1988 drama films 1980s French films