Chocolat (1988)
Claire Denis made Chocolat as her debut feature in 1988, drawing directly on her own experience of growing up in French colonial West Africa. The timing matters: by the late 1980s, the postcolonial reckoning in French cinema was gathering pace, and Denis arrived not as an outside observer but as someone who had actually lived inside that strange, morally compromised world of the colon household. The film is set in Northern Cameroon (shot largely on location there), following an adult French woman who returns to the region and finds herself pulled back into memories of her childhood, when the family's houseboy occupied a position that was at once servile and quietly central to the emotional life of the home. It is a film about distance, about the invisible walls that colonialism builds between people who share the same physical space, and about the particular myopia of the European child who senses something is wrong without having the language to name it. For a companion piece from African cinema that wrestles with related questions of power, tradition and inherited injustice, Macca's review of Lingui, the Sacred Bonds (2021) is worth your time, and Sugar Cane Alley (1983) covers similar colonial-era ground from the perspective of the colonised, making it an interesting point of comparison.
Denis came to the project with a formidable grounding in the craft, having served as assistant director to Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Costa-Gavras across the 1980s. You can feel those influences in the way she handles space and silence, the camera often lingering on faces or landscapes in a way that asks the audience to do a fair amount of the interpretive work. The production was a genuinely international affair, co-produced across France, Germany, and Cameroon with backing from La Sept (the forerunner of Arte) among others, and shot by cinematographer Robert Alazraki, whose work on the dusty, sun-bleached exteriors gives the film a look that is polished but unhurried, the heat practically radiating off the screen. At a time when French art cinema was dominated by heritage productions and the glossy aesthetic of the cinéma du look, Chocolat sat somewhat apart: quieter, more ethnographically attentive, and less interested in crowd-pleasing narrative momentum. Denis would go on to become one of French cinema's most consistently individual voices, with later films like Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum cementing her reputation, but this debut already shows her working in a register very much her own.
The cast assembled here is small but well chosen. Isaach de Bankolé, the Ivorian-French actor who would later appear in work by Jarmusch and others, plays Protee, the houseboy at the centre of those childhood memories. It is a role that demands enormous economy, since the character is defined largely by what he cannot say and cannot do within the colonial order, and de Bankolé had already shown in Black Mic Mac (1986) that he could communicate a great deal with very little. Opposite him, Italian actress Giulia Boschi plays the mother of the household, a woman whose own dissatisfactions and desires play out in the charged, unspoken dynamic between her and Protee. François Cluzet, familiar to French audiences from his work with Claude Miller, plays the district commander, her husband, whose frequent absences from the household create the space in which that tension quietly builds. Jean-Claude Adelin rounds out the principal cast as a visitor whose arrival begins to disturb the equilibrium of the compound.
Watching Claire Denis’s 1988 film Chocolat, I found myself waiting for that empathetic pull I was expecting given the hype. It’s a beautifully observed, deeply atmospheric piece of cinema, but to be honest, I found it very slow-paced. In fact, it’s a little too slow-paced. I know the critical commentary often focuses on the heavy themes of religion & superstition, but in the actual story, those elements are so subtle they almost fade into the background. The Colonialism vibe is very in your face of course. What you’re left with is a film that is undeniably crafted, but one that lacks a truly gripping narrative to anchor it.
Where the film truly shines, however, is in its performances, and fair play to Denis for getting such grounded work out of her cast. Isaac de Bankolé is absolutely brilliant as Protee, conveying volumes with just his eyes and his physical presence. Giulia Boschi is equally great opposite him, and you can genuinely feel her restraint and quiet wonder as she navigates the complex, unspoken tensions of the household. They bring a deeply human heartbeat to a movie that otherwise feels a bit distant, and their scenes together are easily the highlight of the picture.
But even the best acting can’t entirely carry a film that feels like it’s missing a few vital pieces. For me, it really lacked a solid soundtrack to tie the mood together and give the emotional beats the lift they needed. Without that musical anchor, and without a more driving plot, the whole experience just drifts by. It’s not a bad film by any stretch, but it feels like a decent movie from an older age, one you respect for its place in cinema history, but one that doesn't quite grab you by the collar. It’s a respectable, beautifully shot slice of history, but ultimately just a bit too quiet and slow to leave a lasting mark.
Chocolat holds a respected place in Denis's filmography and in the broader canon of postcolonial European cinema, and it is the kind of film that tends to improve in the memory, its imagery and emotional logic settling in slowly after the credits roll. Whether that delayed effect compensates for the experience of watching it in the moment is, as Macca suggests, a fair question to ask. Denis's later work rewarded patient, attentive viewers handsomely, and those who find themselves curious about films that approach questions of identity, place, and power through an elliptical lens might also find something in Pacifiction (2022), which shares a certain slow-burn interest in the psychic cost of colonial remnants, or in Mustang (2015), another film by a female director working with the weight of an oppressive social structure pressing down on its characters. Chocolat, then, is the sort of debut that announces a filmmaker with a genuine and distinctive point of view, even if the film itself does not quite ignite. Some directors arrive fully formed; others arrive with a promise. Denis arrived with both, which is perhaps why this one leaves you admiring more than it leaves you moved.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1988 | Watched: 2026-06-09
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Chocolat (1988) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: BFI Player · BFI Player Amazon Channel · BFI Player Apple TV Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Criterion Channel
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
