Rating: 4/5
[I] employed the term Chocolat for its 1950s slang meaning, "to be had, to be cheated," and therefore the word's association of "to be black and to be cheated. — Claire Denis
France Dalens, a white woman, sits on a beach in Cameroon, watching a black man and his child play in the waves. The man and his son lay down on the dark brown sand and let the waves ripple. France gets dressed, glances back at them, and walks towards Limbé. Some time passes, and a car pulls up, driven by the man from the beach. He offers her a ride to the bus station, but when he finds out she is also going to Douala, he offers her a ride there. As they drive along, France recalls her childhood memories of growing up in Cameroon.
We join France as a child riding in the back of a truck next to Protée, one of her family’s house servants. The car pulls over to the side of the road. Her father, Marc, talks about widening the road. Her mother, Aimée, opens a picnic basket and doles out food. France takes the apple given to her and runs to the back of the truck, where Protée sits alone. She gives him some bread. He crosses the road to a small anthill and spreads the ants over the bread before bringing the bread back. He offers it to France in exchange for the answer to a riddle.
The film observes the day-to-day colonial life of the Dalens in French Cameroon from France’s perspective. Through this, we learn about her relationship with Protée—what they share, spoken and unspoken. At times, we get glimpses of Protée’s experience outside the Dalens, allowing us to see the contrast between his identity outside and within the home.
Throughout the film, we witness the friendship develops between France and Protée. When France eats, Protée stands by the table—she demands that he eat with her and feeds him some of the soup he prepared for her. For Protée, his riddles seem complex, but France knows their answers almost immediately. There is a kinship to their experience as observers of other people’s lives.
We also discover sexual tension between Aimée and Protée. Though neither addresses it directly, Aimée’s frustrations manifest in how she bosses around Protée and the excuses she has to bring him into her presence.
When you look towards the hills, where there are no more huts and trees when the earth and the sky touch, it's the horizon. […] The closer you get to the line, the further it gets. If you walk towards it, it moves further away—it escapes you. […] You see the line, you see it, but it doesn't exist.
Denis’s camera is a still observer, moving mostly in pans to connect disparate moments—from France to someone else or vice versa. Most motion comes from the camera riding in the car, surveying the African landscape. We, like France, must watch as the story unfolds, unable to intervene or change the circumstances.
Though Abdullah Ibrahim’s score covers some facets of the movie, most are silent, especially when surveying the landscape. In a rare moment, an Englishman visits, diegetic music scores their slow dance.
Though Denis’s first film and her first exploring her childhood in French colonial Africa, it would not be her last. Her prior work with Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders shows in the stillness of this movie. It’s a language that she will further refine in subsequent movies into something all her own.