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June 17, 2009

Chocolat (1988)

I wonder how many people looking forward to getting Lasse Hallstrom's Chocolat from Netflix have accidentally received Claire Denis' 1988 debut instead. Of them, I wonder how many actually watched it, and if the same great strengths that so clearly anticipated her advent upon the stage of international cinema might have compelled them to make it past the end credits and see what else she'd made.

Looking at the film in light of her body of work, you watch for these source tags. Certain compositions jump out, certain dialectical cuts that are almost classically familiar. But then there's this sequence, thirty minutes in, in which young France (such an audacious name!) is awakened in the middle of the night by the cackle of hyenas out on the plains of Cameroon, that grabs you and shakes you in an entirely unexpected way. I had to watch it again right away, just to make sure I'd really seen what I thought I'd seen.

It begins with France, peeking around her mother's door. This is followed by a shot of her mother beckoning to her from behind the ghostly mosquito net around her bed - but the cut between the shots comes a few seconds later than we anticipate, so that by the time we see Aimée, the mother, she's already sitting up, in the process of leaning forward. Any potential for comfort or safety on the part of the viewer is immediately thrown of by this edit, which clearly articulates that Aimée has been caught in the act of something. Of course, we know that she hasn't, not literally - but this edit predicates the mode in which Denis stages the rest of the scene.

Shortly after France has clambered into bed, the hyenas grow louder. Aimée lights a lamp and leaves the room for a moment. When she returns, it's with an egregiously oversized dagger. She enters the room, unsheathing it and raising it to her breast, while narrowing her eyes towards her daughter. Why does she look at her this way? It's an image rife with associations - my mind jumped instantly to Mario Bava - and it was here that I realized with a start that Denis was essentially letting the scene play out under the guise of a horror film!

It gets even better. Aimée calls for Protée, their houseboy. His appearance is disorienting; she calls out the door for him, but his voice responds from behind her, and she realizes that he's materialized outside the window. Just standing there, impassively, like a ghost, or a revenant (this particular image calls to mind Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie, which allows one to entertain the possibility that Pedro Costa might have been influenced by this film when he cast the great Isaach De Bankolé in Casa de Lava, his enigmatic offshoot of Tourneur's classic).

Protée enters with his rifle and looks down at France, who watches him shyly from the bed. But we see his perspective before we see hers, and so we're presented with this seemingly isolated shot of a littler girl glowering up at the camera. As with the opening conjunction of shots, there's nothing literally out of the ordinary here - France is looking up at her friend, afraid to be her normal convivial self in her mother's presence - but the order in which they occur adds to the growing unease of the sequence. Something is awry.

This is exacerbated with an abrupt cut to Aimée, who glances over her shoulder and sends a terse and anxious look - not towards Protée or France, but to the exchange occurring between them. Again, she appears on edge. She wants to be in control of this situation, but isn't.

The lamps are put out. The night has a different color than it did before - it's cooler now, darker, stranger. Aimée and France return to the bed. After a few moments, France's little head perks up, and she once again regards Protée. Her gaze - the camera's - pushes in on him as he sits in the darkness, weapon in hand. He offers a hint of a smile. We don't see the response. The sequence ends.

Why did Denis stage the scene this way? Because: Aimée has invited Protée to spend the night in her room. It was the only way to stage it.

* * *

I have to mention the last shot, which I can only respond to as a filmmaker. I don't know if it was scripted, or if the film was conceived to end this way; I have to believe that it was, but regardless, it's one of those shots that, from the very first frame, is entirely conclusive. It carries the weight of the entire film, and effortlessly sends it off. Sometimes when you're shooting, these shots will randomly present themselves to you, and you'll realize that this is how the film will end. Likewise, when you're viewing a film, those shots maintain the same intrinsic significance, and you watch them hoping against hope that the film will indeed go out on this note.

They usually do. Chocolat is, through and through, a wonderful film, but I feel that it is with this shot that Denis truly began the overture that she's still sustaining, 21 years later.

Next up: J'ai Pas Sommeil .

Posted by David Lowery at June 17, 2009 12:53 PM

Comments

Posted by: Catherine Grant at June 21, 2009 6:31 AM

Posted by: David Lowery at June 22, 2009 3:30 AM