CHOCOLAT MOVIE CAST HOW TO

Denis makes her point about the effects of colonialism without preaching or romanticizing the characters. Another, Luc (Jean-Claude Adelin), an arrogant white Frenchman, upsets the racial balance when he uses the outside shower, eats with the servants, and taunts Aimée about her attraction to Protée leading her to a final emotional confrontation with the manservant.Ĭhocolat is loosely autobiographical, adapted from the childhood memories of the director, and is slowly paced and as mysterious as the brooding isolation of the land on which it is filmed. Each visitor shows their disdain for the Africans, one, a wealthy owner of a coffee plantation brings leftover food from the kitchen to his black mistress hiding in his room. When a plane loses its propeller and is forced to land in the nearby mountains, the crew and passengers must move into the compound until a replacement part can be located. In spite of their bond, the true nature of their master-servant relationship is apparent when France commands Protée to interrupt his conversation with a teacher and immediately take her home, and when Protée stands beside her at the dinner table, waiting for her next command.

CHOCOLAT MOVIE CAST HOW TO

The young France (Cecile Ducasse) also forms a bond with the manservant, feeding him from her plate while he shows her how to eat crushed ants and carries her on his shoulders in walks beneath the nocturnal sky. In one telling sequence, she invites him into her bedroom to help her put on her dress and the two stare at each other's image in the mirror with a defiant longing in their eyes, knowing that any interaction is taboo. It becomes clear when her husband Marc (François Cluzet) goes away on business that Aimée and Protée are sexually attracted to each other but the rules of society prevent it from being openly acknowledged. The white families rooms are private and off limits to all except Protée who works in the house while the servants are forced to eat and shower outdoors, exposing their naked bronze bodies to the white family's gazes. The household is divided into public and private spaces. The heart of the film, however, revolves around France's mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi) and her love/hate relationship with Protée that is seething with unspoken sexual tension.

France Dalens (Mireille Perrier), a young woman traveling through Cameroon, recalls her childhood when her father (Francois Cluzet) was a government official in the French Cameroons and she had a loving friendship with the brooding manservant, Protée (Isaach de Bankolé). The film is told from the perspective of an adult returning to her childhood home in a foreign country. The theme is similar to the recent Nowhere in Africa, though the films are vastly different in scope and emphasis. Set in the Cameroons in West Africa in the 1950s, Claire Denis' Chocolat is a beautifully photographed and emotionally resonant tone poem that depicts the effects of a dying colonialism on a young family during the last years of French rule.

Chocolat movie cast