“Chocolat” may face some of the same challenges. Sy has said that in the French context, it resonates differently. Some American critics saw it as racist Mr. Sy a César award, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, but also generated controversy about its depiction of race. It opened in France in 2011, breaking box office records there and earning Mr. Sy is best known for co-starring in “The Intouchables,” a French comedy about a grumpy white paraplegic and his black caretaker. Sy appeared on the cover of Télérama, an influential French weekly, beneath the headline “In Hollywood, they see me as French, not black.” In the throes of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Mr. or France, I always worked as an actor, not a black actor,” he said. Sy said he tries to transcend debates about race. “I hope people who see it will be aware of this history and ask themselves the question, How we can improve things today?” Sy, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles, where he moved in 2013 to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. “We talk about the past, which is real and of course there are echoes with the present,” said Mr. Josephine Baker and other African-American dance acts come to France, and the clown act becomes outdated. He changes tack and performs “Othello.” Tastes change. Eventually, Chocolat grows frustrated with his act and with earning less than his white co-star. But are they laughing with, or at, the black clown? Those are the ambiguities at play in the film. The elegant audience is convulsed with laughter. The act evolves, but a central idea, white fear of black people, remains.Ī few years later on a fancy Paris stage, Chocolat circles Foottit, who pretends to be terrified. ![]() 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. Padilla, who escaped slavery in Cuba, came to France via Spain. Zem said, “he’d been completely forgotten, and I was interested in rehabilitating him.” ![]() “He comes from a very poor milieu, he finds glory, grandeur, and then decadence and decline into hell,” he added. “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. But “Chocolat” also has a strong story line. 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. A Ban on Electric Scooters: An overwhelming majority of Parisians who took part in a referendum on rental electric scooters voted to ban the devices from the streets of the French capital.Business Titans: Two French businessmen, Bernard Arnault of the LVMH empire and Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers of L’Oréal, were named the world’s wealthiest man and woman.On the Cover: A French minister’s decision to pose clothed for French Playboy set off a national debate, with critics calling the photo shoot a distraction amid nationwide protests over a new pension law.But his reception on returning to Europe has been chilly. From Red Carpet to Doghouse: President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to China was little short of a love-fest that he clearly hoped would further his ambitions.“The film addresses a subject that is rarely addressed in school or the media.” “Because of Omar Sy, young people go,” he said. “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. Padilla escaped slavery in Cuba, came to Europe and found fame making white people laugh, only to lose his fortune to drink and gambling. Sy to flex his comic muscles and as a story about the hazards of success. 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.Ī 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. 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 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.Ī new French film has helped restore his legacy. Toulouse Lautrec painted him - often in ugly caricature as a monkey - the Lumière Brothers filmed him and Jean Cocteau and Colette wrote about him. ![]() PARIS - The clown known as Chocolat, a former Afro-Cuban slave, was a fixture of Belle Époque Paris.
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