‘Chocolat‘, directed in 2016 by Roschdy Zem, is one of those films that left me happy after viewing, but which later, as emotions and ideas settled, I started to consider as a missed opportunity for an exceptional creation. The film is based on the biography of a real character, a black clown in an almost exclusively white France at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, a France divided by the Dreyfus affair and far from having eliminated racial prejudices. The real Rafael Padilla – who took the circus name Chocolat – was born a slave, orphaned at a young age and brought from Cuba to Spain to be a servant. Fleeing from abusive masters, he took refuge in a circus. Together with the English clown George Footit they formed a famous duo, which established a tradition of performing duos composed of a classic clown and a vagabond outsider. Forgotten for most of the 20th century, he was rediscovered by historian Gérard Noiriel, an expert in the history of immigration in France, who wrote two books about him and was a co-author of the screenplay for this film. However, the film departs quite a bit from the real biography of the character. The results of this liberties taken by the film’s authors in relation to the real biography are mixed.
I am not a fan of faithful biographies at all costs, but I think that in this case some significant details have been left out, and others have been added that do not necessarily contribute to the narrative or the profile of the character. Chocolat was not born in Africa and almost nothing is said about his Cuban origin and adventurous and traumatic childhood. The meeting between Chocolat and George Footit is set in an imaginary circus and here the addition seems inspired to me, because Mr. and Mrs. Delvaux are well-sketched and will play (especially she) a role in the story later on. Marie Hecquet, Chocolat’s lover, is a widow in the film, and I don’t really see the point of this embellishment of the character. Her relationship with Chocolat was actually an adultery, the woman destroyed her family and renounced a bourgeois existence for a relationship condemned by most of those around her, and this sacrifice for love is almost completely lost. The artist was never imprisoned and tortured, but let’s say that this episode adds drama to the story. Finally, it is insinuated in the film that Chocolat was left crippled – mutilated in a fight because he couldn’t pay his debts -, in reality he continued to appear in circuses until the end of his life. His later lack of success is mainly due to the fact that French passion for the circus had somewhat evaporated.
Fortunately for the film, most of the weaknesses of the script are compensated by the actors’ performances and the exceptional rendition of the period and of a world of the circus that we know from the paintings of Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec but also from the films of the Lumière brothers (fragments of these in the credits, don’t miss them!). Omar Sy creates a statuesque and captivating Chocolat, naive and sensitive at the same time. James Thierrée, who plays the role of George Footit, is also formidable. I thought about Charlot while watching the film, both because of the period in which the action takes place and the clown character. Reading about the actor after watching, I found out that he is actually the grandson of the great artist and I also realized the striking physical resemblance. How does this actor not have a more visible career? I think if the connection between the two characters – as artists, as friends, as people so different in a society dominated by prejudice – had been better written we would have had an exceptional film. But there are still enough good reasons not to miss watching ‘Chocolat‘.