Neither sweet confection nor recent sugary flick of same name
Claire Denis’s debut Chocolat now available on DVD
Claire Denis is becoming one of the most important French filmmakers working today.
Although she has been writing and directing feature films since the late ’80s, she has only recently made a significant impact outside the film festival circuit (at least in North America). It was with her film Beau Travail (1999), which garnered both critical praise and a solid arthouse release in the U.S., that Denis became more visible outside of France. Most recently she made waves with her newest film, Trouble Every Day (2001), which split the opinions of critics in Cannes this year and has scandalized and enraged festival audiences around the world. With all this momentum behind her, it’s appropriate to look back at her earlier work, and the recent DVD release of her first feature, Chocolat, is a good place to start.
Denis actually started her career as an assistant director and managed to work with an impressive list of influential directors such as Costa-Gavras (Hanna K), Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire) and Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law). It was her connection to Wenders that eventually helped her to get Chocolat financed. Filmed on location in Cameroon and completed in 1988, Chocolat was that year’s official French entry in the Cannes film festival.
Described as a semi-autobiographical work, Chocolat tells the story of a white family living in Cameroon towards the end of its French colonial rule. Marc Dalens (François Cluzet), the local colonial authority at a remote outpost, lives contentedly in a veritable paradise with his beautiful wife Aimée (Giulia Boschi) and pretty daughter France (Cécile Ducasse). As the film quietly unfolds we begin to feel the tensions and conflicts that boil below the surface of this exotic wonderland.
As much as Marc has been seduced by the exotic landscape, Aimée is struggling against being seduced by the erotic landscape – in the form of the handsome and noble African houseboy Protée. Aimée’s drive for civilized (French) domestic normalcy also seems doomed under the circumstances.
What makes Chocolat original is that the film focuses on the relationship between France (the seven-year-old daughter) and Protée (the houseboy). France’s youth and innocence allow her to have a much deeper connection with Protée than he has with her father or mother. The film shines brightest when France and Protée are together. This innocent observant perspective allows the racist nature of colonial rule to be cleverly shown to the audience without being expounded upon overtly. Denis focuses sharply on the personal relationships between characters, leaving the political to develop by itself.
So Chocolat is by no means apolitical, it just chooses a poetic approach to its subject, neither wearing its views on its sleeve nor offering up the family as a simple allegorical microcosm of colonialism. It is more concerned with the ways racism manifests itself when filtered through the complex relationships and interactions people have with one another.
Although Chocolat isn’t as powerful as her latest films, it has the trademark style and feeling that make Denis’s films distinct. All her work leaves the impression of a spring wound tight but never allowed to snap fully back, and Chocolat is no exception. Beneath its subtle and beautifully lyrical surface, Chocolat is all tension and although it feels like a very personal film, it never seems exclusive or impenetrable. As well, Denis always manages to litter her films with vaguely disturbing moments – hints that there is, under the surface of everything, something nasty. It is her unique combination of the subtle, the controlled and the disturbing that makes Denis the standout filmmaker that she is. |
