Claire Denis's Chocolat (1988)

This is Claire Denis's first featur film, which has strong autobiographical elements and bears some resemblances to White Material, although the later film is much bleaker and is set in an unnamed African country. Chocolat though is set in the final days of Cameroon as a French colony. 'Être chocolat' is an expression meaning to be duped.

France Dalens (Mireille Perrier) walks along a road in French Cameroon, where her father Marc (François Cluzet) was an administrator, and is given a lift to Douala. Then begins the long flashback to when France (now played by Cécile Ducasse) is a young child, with her father and her mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi) and the 'boy' Protée (Isaach de Bankolé), to whom she relates very well.

The film is slow, colourful, languid, much is left unspoken, and the sexual tension between Aimée and Protée is almost tangible until it reaches a non-sexual climax.