Movie Analysis: "Chocolat" by Claire Denis

Thèmes abordés

Rapport sur le Film Chocolat en Anglais de Claire Denis

Résumé du document

Chocolat is a movie made by a women filmmaker named Claire Denis. She lived her youth in Senegal, she made a semi-autobiographic movie to share a part of her life with us and mostly to show the aspect of the woman's life during this colonial time. But in my point of view, even if the story is told through France's flashback, this movie doesn't put in the first line the life of a woman, but shows more the colonial side. Even the title "Chocolat" gives us directly the main subject of the movie, it makes reference to the color of the peoples' skin, and in that case, the main protagonist of it, Protee. Why him? The one telling the story is France, but still, the story begins with him and ends with him; the most repeated name in the movie is Protee, normally, you would say he's the house boy, but he appears in almost all the scenes, even the ones where France is absent. We can go even further by saying that these flashbacks look as though they are told through Protee's eyes, because we can see all his expressions.

Extraits

[...] And you can see him, living in this condition, of the houseboy. I feel like he's having a happy life, he never complained about it, his master respect him treat him as someone they trust. Directly at the beginning of the movie, the father of the family before leaving to an amazing adventure taking Protée apart and telling him these few words: Je teconfie ma famille, veillesureux”. Which master would put the safety of his family into the hand of his as they call them in the movie. [...]

[...] The way they look at each other, the intensity of their silence, the camera catches it and shows us. When she came to him with her sandwich and gives it to him, he takes it, goes and put some ant on it, and finally gives it back to her and she ate it. This trust showed in that exchange, he share his culture with her, and she let him do it, he teaches her his native language, like how to say some body parts, and one time in he draws on her arm with the blood of a chicken. [...]

[...] It's a way for him to make both, explaining to her without word, all he has been through, that that silent humiliation that he never complained about and never showed any sign of it, and it akiso mean of him taking control back his life, freeing himself from this life of servitude, she represents at this moment the sister and the master. It's a double meaning act. Thanks to that act the relation of power is broken, they are equal, they both have the same burning, they share it, the same mark. It's a new bond that will remember of each other for ever, it's a new bond created between them, without this relation of power between them. [...]

[...] This character of Protéerealy intrigued and impressed me, first his infinite devotion without complain, you might think that's because his uneducated, but no, actually he seems to be really smart, he speaks 3 languages, French, English, and his native language Cameroonian, this is a lot for just a housebow whereas the family just spoke one. France and Protée‘s relationship is one of the strongest relation in this movie. At the beginning without words you can feel it, at the back of the trunk, they are sitting in silence looking at each other, in silence, and they communicate through their silence. No need to speak, silence speak for them. They have this connection between them that is really strong, like a brother sister relation. [...]

[...] But around the end, this relation began to be broken, Protée realize that he's just a houseboy; he's not the real brother of France. But despite that I think that he still care very much for her and like a big brother, he never renounce to his role, he had to share everything with her like he was doing. He shared with her his food habit, his language, his culture, and in the end his pain. In fact at the end, Protée allow the ten year old France to burn her hand, but why does he makes that? [...]