James Thierrée took the show for me followed neck and neck by Omar Sy. What a tribute of excellent acting! I found the movie totally fascinating, having no idea about these lives and events and how they were both, in their own way, totally ground breaking performers.Unlike one review, I reveled in the depth of the story. I found the solid mix of racial issues, the rise of their fame and brilliance, the whole patina that made up parts of this time in their lives made for excellent viewing for anyone with something of a thinking mind.Just a wonderful movie with standout brilliant acting. I was surprised and enthralled.

Monsieur Chocolat takes you on a black man and his clown mentor's journey at the turn of the 20th Century.Visually sumptuous, the film invites you to suspend your 21st-century habits and venture back into a time when everything was slower. Everything was tougher too though, depending on the cards you had been dealt in life.If you allow yourself to enter this sometimes magical and sometimes scary world, you will be seduced by the rhythm and pace of the story as it unfolds and moved by the resilience of the human spirit.The hard and soft edges of humanity stay with you long after you leave the cinema.

I am the first to be surprised by this movie which I expected to be a comedy. It's usual that, in France, and not only in France, Black actors are used mainly in comedies, as buffoons, and I don't bear this. Omar Sy has been involved in many of this kind of stuff, unfortunately. But here, he is absolutely outstanding, poignant, convincing. He is a true actor, deserving an Academy Award for his performance. I think no one else could have played this role. The role of a totally forgotten Black artist who lived in the first years of the twentieth century, who raised for a very short fame before dying in poverty. In other words, we find here a pure American scheme: rise and fall. This kind of topic is used for gangsters films, or dramas involving artists, business men, politicians. I crave for these stories. But if you live the Wikipédia document, you'll notice that many lines have been forgotten about the true facts concerning the Chocolat's life. This film should have been longer or made through a short TV series, with four episodes.A beautiful but sad drama which deserves to be widely known.

I watch this movie in the last week in a cinema festival in my city called "Festival of Cinema Francês Varilux". The reasons who motivated me to see this movie was the circus theme, which pleases quite my particular taste, and I not regretted it one bit having assisted. The story based on real events was very well represented by their respective actors, and shows a clear way the difficulties and prejudices suffering black people in society in general during the nineteenth century. It's exciting and makes us us to reflect about the life of the clown Chocolat. I really enjoyed, is engaging and exciting. Script, scenery and costumes simply perfect. You feel in time the film is over, the places makes you travel centuries in the past. It seems that every detail has been thought out thoroughly, just impeccable.