Chocolate
Chocolate is a soul-stirring story of Eve, a woman who finds herself in the midst of a group of homeless people after being lost. With no memory of her past except that she had a daughter named Ellen, Eve struggles to remember who she was. Piercey Dalton’s amazing acting skills just complete this beautiful story that tug at the heartstrings. With an attempt to remind the severity of Alzheimer’s disease, director Thiago Dadalt creates this moving short made with certitude.
After finding herself in a truly wretched state among a group of unidentifiable characters, Eve tries to make sense of whatever little details she remembers from the past. In a delusion, Eve sees her daughter Ellen in a little girl playing in a dismal neighbourhood. After trying to entice whom she believes to be her daughter, Eve finds out about the state of her memory from a fellow homeless person, Lewis Brown who is fed up reminding that she remembers nothing from the past. He then takes her onto a highway and assigns a board for making money begging, while he takes care of Eve’s tent. With no faculty to make sense of what had happened and what is happening around her, she lives in a constantly tumultuous state of mind.
Story moves forward with flashbacks revealing who she was before the incident. She strays onto the other side of the bridge which she is forbidden from doing by Lewis Brown and surrounds herself with busy people of Hollywood. An important detail of her past is then uncovered while thinking and she holds onto that crucial information which could make sense of her situation. The aptness of the film’s title and the very concept of making story revolve around the word ‘Chocolate’ is very well thought-out and renders this film a sense of tenderness and completeness.
It is needless to say that the brilliance of the film can be attributed to Piercey Dalton, who has done an amazing job of playing a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Her incapacitated eyes, vulnerable situation, and the determination Eve displays to find her daughter in such enduring state – everything contributes to the exceptional outcome of the film. Makeup team has done an amazing job at making Eve look like the way writers might have imagined the character to be – wistful and dismal. We can clearly see the job done right during the flashback episodes, the difference in Eve’s appearance when she played a housewife and while playing a homeless woman is so convincing.
It is during the flashbacks we understand the character of Eve wholly; the way she realises that she is losing memory, and the way she tries to make her daughter remember their new phone number – maybe to protect her from what she might have inferred from her mother’s death – these play a vital role in making any film complete. This is one of those times when it is really difficult to pick one department whose contribution drove the film to success because this is a remarkable association and conviction of departments. Thiago Dadalt deserves every praise for this well-written story and brilliantly directed film. Chocolate is what makes the idea of watching films indispensable.
