‘Chocolat,’ a Biopic in France, Stirs a Discussion About Race
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — The clown known as Chocolat, a former Afro-Cuban slave, was a fixture of Belle Époque Paris. Toulouse Lautrec painted him — often in ugly caricature as a monkey — the Lumière Brothers filmed him and Jean Cocteau and Colette wrote about him. The first black performer to become a major popular hit in France and a key figure in its awakening as a multicultural nation, he died in poverty in 1917 and his memory faded. A new French film has helped restore his legacy. Called “Chocolat,” it stars Omar Sy, the most prominent black actor in France, as the title character, who was named Rafael Padilla after his death but whose birth name is unknown. The film co-stars the experimental circus artist James Thierrée, a grandson of Charlie Chaplin, as George Foottit, an English clown and the other half of a duo that made both famous. A box office success, the film operates on many levels: as a family-friendly conversation-starter about racism in France, as an exploration of the history of taste and cultural appropriation, as a vehicle for Mr. Sy to flex his comic muscles and as a story about the hazards of success. Padilla escaped slavery in Cuba, came to Europe and found fame making white people laugh, only to lose his fortune to drink and gambling. “It’s a film that talks about a subject that French cinema has almost never broached: racism,” said Thomas Sotinel, who writes on film for Le Monde. “Because of Omar Sy, young people go,” he said. “The film addresses a subject that is rarely addressed in school or the media.” With an impressive 1.9 million tickets sold in France since it opened in February, the film has not been picked up for distribution in the United States but will open the Colcoa French Film Festival in Los Angeles on Monday. Ahead of the film’s opening in France, the mayor of Paris put a plaque commemorating the clown on a building where he used to perform. The film has put a rare focus on French people of African origin in a country where minority actors rarely headline films, and where most debates about identity center on Muslims from North Africa. But “Chocolat” also has a strong story line. “It’s the story of a rock star,” said the film’s director, Roschdy Zem, a French director and actor of Moroccan origin whose films have often addressed questions of French identity. “He comes from a very poor milieu, he finds glory, grandeur, and then decadence and decline into hell,” he added. Also, Mr. Zem said, “he’d been completely forgotten, and I was interested in rehabilitating him.” Padilla, who escaped slavery in Cuba, came to France via Spain. In the film, he and Foottit meet at a dingy circus in the French provinces, where his act was to play a cannibal, wearing a loincloth and baring his teeth while the audience gasps. The act evolves, but a central idea, white fear of black people, remains. A few years later on a fancy Paris stage, Chocolat circles Foottit, who pretends to be terrified. The elegant audience is convulsed with laughter. But are they laughing with, or at, the black clown? Those are the ambiguities at play in the film. Eventually, Chocolat grows frustrated with his act and with earning less than his white co-star. He changes tack and performs “Othello.” Tastes change. Josephine Baker and other African-American dance acts come to France, and the clown act becomes outdated. “We talk about the past, which is real and of course there are echoes with the present,” said Mr. Sy, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, where he moved in 2013 to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. “I hope people who see it will be aware of this history and ask themselves the question, How we can improve things today?” Mr. Sy said he tries to transcend debates about race. “In the U.S. or France, I always worked as an actor, not a black actor,” he said. In the throes of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Mr. Sy appeared on the cover of Télérama, an influential French weekly, beneath the headline “In Hollywood, they see me as French, not black.” Mr. Sy is best known for co-starring in “The Intouchables,” a French comedy about a grumpy white paraplegic and his black caretaker. It opened in France in 2011, breaking box office records there and earning Mr. Sy a César award, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, but also generated controversy about its depiction of race. Some American critics saw it as racist; Mr. Sy has said that in the French context, it resonates differently. “Chocolat” may face some of the same challenges. To audiences in the United States, the film’s title — and the poster of a grinning Mr. Sy dressed nattily as Chocolat the clown — might seem tone deaf. But Gérard Noiriel, a French historian who was a writer on the film and is the author of the book “Chocolat: The Real History of a Nameless Man,” said the movie’s title was self-aware. “People should understand that it’s the nickname given him by the French and that reveals the prejudices of the era,” Mr. Noiriel said. After the clown’s death, Foottit’s son named him Rafael Padilla, the surname of the wife of the Spanish master who had bought him in Cuba. In France, the film has been more of a popular than critical success. Some highbrow critics saw it as a more mainstream answer to Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Black Venus” (2010), a more complex film about a South African woman who was exhibited in Europe in the late 19th century as the “Hottentot Venus.” “Chocolat” was the idea of the French film producer Nicolas Altmayer, who read a newspaper report on a traveling theater performance about Chocolat that Mr. Noiriel had organized. It took years to put together the financing. And he needed Mr. Sy to headline. In France, “there are few black actors and no bankable actors,” Mr. Altmayer said. “This is a 19-million-euro film. There’s no choice. If Omar had said no, I would have stopped the project.” Mr. Thierrée spent an intense month with Mr. Sy developing their clown act. While Padilla was short and energetic, Mr. Sy is tall, with a loping gait. They inverted the dynamic, with Foottit becoming the more energetic. “We tried to have this kind of tightrope act between historical faithfulness and trying to do something original,” Mr. Thierrée said. French critics have raved about his performance, and noted the strong family resemblance to his grandfather. With comic touches, the film comes at a serious time. “Today, with the political climate in France and the rise of the far right, we have a responsibility to reach different publics,” Mr. Noiriel said. “We live in a France that is a diverse and multicultural society, but collective memory is still too Franco-centric.” |