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Review: ‘Chocolat’ is a Poignant Look at French Colonial Africa
The debut feature of Claire Denis is visually arresting, well acted and (ironically) tough to stomach
Much to my shame, it has actually been years since I last encountered a new (as in, new to me) film from Claire Denis, one of my top choices for the greatest director of all time. Denis’ 2022 output highlighted, to me, some of the best and worst of her work — I didn’t care much for Stars at Noon, her second English language feature, but Both Sides of the Blade was an extremely strong drama — and since then I have largely been a pretty lazy viewer, opting for more accessible films than Denis’ usually slow moving and opaque works (again, much to my shame).
Still, the time has long since passed that I should have returned to her work, and picking up a copy of the new BFI restoration of Chocolat proved a good excuse to finally come back. Chocolat is Denis’ very first feature, released 34 years before her two 2022 films, that serves as a semiautobiographical account of Denis’ experiences growing up in French Colonial Africa. Despite the multiple years of distance between myself and Denis’ work, it took only 3 shots and 2 cuts to remind me what I had been missing as Chocolat opens on a beach. An African man and his son play around in the sea behind…
