Chocolat

Director: Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis, Claire Denis

1988 / 105min / DCP

After years of honing her craft as assistant director for the likes of Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders, Denis emerged as a filmmaker with a distinct and fully-formed sense of her art in this, her sensual and infinitely sensitive semi-autobiographical feature debut, drawing on memories of a childhood spent in French-occupied Africa. In Cameroon, civil servant François Cluzet comes and goes on his appointed rounds, while his young daughter and neglected wife (Giulia Boschi) gravitate ever closer to their house servant, Protée (Isaach de Bankolé) in his absence, and the murmurs of anti-colonial resistance increase in vehemence away from eavesdropping whites. “Some kind of miniature classic.”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times