Chocolat_(1988_film) Knowpia

Chocolat
Chocolat
	English-language film poster
Directed by	Claire Denis
Written by	Claire Denis; Jean-Pol Fargeau
Produced by	Alain Belmondo; Gérard Crosnier
Starring	Isaach de Bankolé; François Cluzet; Giulia Boschi;
Cinematography	Robert Alazraki
Edited by	Monica Coleman; Claudine Merlin; Sylvie Quester
Music by	Abdullah Ibrahim
Release date	1988;
Running time	105 minutes
Countries	France; Cameroon
Languages	French; English
Box office	$2.3 million

Chocolat is a 1988 French period drama film written and directed by Claire Denis in her directorial debut that follows a young girl who lives with her family in French Cameroon. Marc and Aimée Dalens (François Cluzet 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.^[2]

Plot edit

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 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.^[3]

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 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.

Towards the end of the film, France's father reveals a central theme of the film as he explains to her what the horizon 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 edit

Isaach de Bankolé as Protée
Giulia Boschi as Aimée Dalens
François Cluzet 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

The Mindif Peaks, depicted in the film.

Soundtrack edit

The soundtrack, performed and recorded by Abdullah Ibrahim, was released in 1988 as Mindif.^[4]

References edit

^ "Chocolat (1988) - JPBox-Office". www.jpbox-office.com.
^ "Festival de Cannes: Chocolat". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
^ Harper, Graeme; Rayner, Jonathan (January 1, 2010). Cinema and Landscape: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography: Film, Nation and Cultural Geography. Intellect Books. ISBN 9781841503042 – via Google Books.
^ Singerman, Alan J.; Bissière, Michèle (September 15, 2018). Contemporary French Cinema: A Student's Book. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 9781585108947 – via Google Books.