Wednesday movie night at Il Caffé

Movie night at Il Caffé, a charming Italian restaurant on a pedestrian road behind the Peón Contreras theater. Have dinner on your own at 6 to enjoy a free movie, aimed at English-speaking audiences, at 7.

Today’s choice: “Chocolat,” (2016), a French biopic about the first black circus performer, who captivated French society during La Belle Epoque. A former slave from Cuba, Rafael Padilla teamed up with British clown and acrobat Footit, and, calling themselves Footit & Chocolat, delighted French audiences with their exuberance and originality for more than two decades.  The role of Chocolat is played by Omar Sy, who played the caregiver in the award-winning French film “The Intouchables,” while the role of Footit is played by James Thiérrée, a world-class acrobat and circus performer who also happens to be Charlie Chaplin’s grandson. As pointed out by one reviewer:

…this is the same James Thiérrée who is such a genius stage performer, who tours the world with astounding surrealistic circus acts, and is perhaps the most highly regarded person of his kind in the world. He is the grandson of Charlie Chaplin and looks exactly like him (I mean Chaplin in real life, not ‘the Little Tramp’). I first saw James and his sister Aurélie (another well known solo performer now) perform onstage when they were tiny children, appearing with their parents, Victoria Chaplin and Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée. Of all the Chaplin children, Victoria is the one who carried on the pure Chaplin talents for mime and acrobatics with the utmost genius, and her son has even surpassed her. Victoria’s most astonishing feat in her own touring circus act was to fold herself up so that she could be shut into a moderately-sized suitcase!