For her first film, Denis re-created two lost worlds: colonial Cameroon in the 1950s, and the familiar yet foreign territory of childhood. Framed as the recollections of a grown woman, Chocolat draws on the director's own early years, and it has all the sensory acuity and strangeness of memory. The point-of-view character, pointedly named France, is the daughter of a colonial officer at a remote outpost; her closest companion is Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), the household's black “boy,” who serves not only as helper and protector but also as a vector for the white characters' various desires and delusions. The film's quiet beauty, in thrall to the landscape, could suggest a current of nostalgia, but Denis carefully complicates matters. The ending executes a graceful shift in perspective, reminding us that France is not the center of the universe.
—Juliet Clark