Stephen Winter | Chocolate Babies / 1996

fighting for love and dignity

by Douglas Messeerli

 

Stephen Winter (screenwriter and director) Chocolate Babies / 1996

 

Superficially, as the brief Wikipedia commentary purports, Stephen Winter’s 1996 film Chocolate Babies “follows a group of queer activists of color in New York City that implemented actions against conservative politicians in response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s within African American communities.”

     Perhaps that’s why this truly significant and moving work, although receiving a great deal of praise upon its original release, simply failed to gain traction and was left behind on the cinematic shelf, only recently, in 2021, to be taken up again by Criterion Classics and reperceived to be an essential work in the 1990s AIDS canon. The film was also featured this year in New York’s Newfest as one of their lost classics.

     What most critics of the past seemed and critics today still seem unable to do is to individualize the characters of this work, and to discuss them as part of the film’s complex narrative as opposed to a single-minded social statement, which the film is certainly not.

       As a commentator on Letterboxd (Liz) recently opined, quite touchingly, this film is “a dizzying visual mixtape that follows a gang of (mostly) HIV-positive queer people of color and their loud direct action war against the conservative politicians who continue to do nothing to stop the spread of the disease decimating their communities, straight and gay. That’s an irresistible hook, but what really surprised me is how Winter uses this premise as a jumping off point for examinations of addiction, alcoholism, abortion, identity, religion, the closet, and the realities of queer inner city life in the 90s. The result is something that feels wholly unique—loud, angry, transgressive, messy, queer. And get this—it’s really funny, too.”

      The group of activists themselves represent an odd and messy mix of individuals. Sam (Jon Kit Lee), dying of AIDS and accordingly somewhat cynical and bitter, and the flamboyant often argumentative overweight gay man Larva (Dudley Findlay Jr.) are the core of the group, along with the strong female follower Jamela (Suzane Gregg Ferguson) and transvestites/transgender figures Lauretta (Michael Hyatt) and Lady Marmalade (Michael Lynch), the latter a drug addict who, if she is sometimes too incapacitated to fully participate in their activities, has nonetheless been given some of the film’s most poignant and politically charged lines: “Some folks got AIDS, and some folks got Magic Johson Disease. Folks with Magic Johnson disease are innocent victims. Well, I ain’t got Magic Johnson Disease.” Each of these figures is given a rich screen presence, and their interactions, personal fights with one another, and deep love for the others makes up a far more important portion of the film than does their actual attacks on bigoted and ignorant politicians who have not bothered to pay attention to the AIDS crisis of their communities.

      Crucial to this mix is the sort of moral compass to the off-kilter group, Max (Claude E. Sloan), an Asian-American with whom Sam is desperately in love and for who Max serves as a sort of lover/savior.

      The younger Max, however, is also naïve. Working for the local Councilman Melvin Freeman (Bryan Webster), he keeps suggesting that group become more cogently political, engaging in the robbery of files he believes Freeman keeps on all the AIDS patients in his district. But over the time Freeman, a highly closeted black gay man, himself becomes infatuated with Max and sexually approaches him, offering the young Asian a position even if he is elected, as he hopes to be, to Congress.

       It is difficult to determine whether or not Max is himself taken in by Freeman’s sexual invitations or simply sees it as an opportunity to further worm his and his friends into the records which might help to scandalize all those who have not acted to help their constituencies suffering from AIDS. At one point he seems to buy into Freeman’s excuse for not bringing an AIDS clinic to his district, the Councilman arguing that it would only further represent the difficult conditions of living there.

       On the other hand, Max suggests that if they were to kidnap Freeman they might easily be able to unveil the hidden records. But our small “radical” gathering of misfits, to date having only tossed blood (not their own) upon their political victims or threatened them verbally for their political views, have no intention of getting themselves arrested. In a sense, their own loose-ended connections and their obviously weakened health have saved them from being revealed, even though the attacked politicians grossly exaggerate the group’s numbers and power, promising to bring down the “evil gang.”

      None of these misfits bother to listen to Max’s recommendations about serious political endeavors. Suddenly Max himself, after a date or two with Freeman, kidnaps the Councilman, who seems almost willingly to go along with the group, even as they travel en masse to visit Sam’s sister and other family members with whom, because of his sexuality and disease, have long ago cut their ties with him. For a moment, it appears that Freeman, like Sam, is so in love with Max that he’s willing to almost “join the gang.”

      Max himself comes out to his highly distraught Asian mother, whose only solution seems to agree to his being sent away for a while to personally come to terms with his sexuality and racial roots.

       Meanwhile, as these folks’ illnesses get worse, their addictions make life almost impossible, and death begins to descend upon several of them, sans Max they become only a band a ragtag squabblers who can’t even save themselves let alone provide political actions that might ignite their community into action.

       Max returns to a dying Sam, holding his hand and kissing him as the two admit to their true dedication and love, far too late to be able to repair the vast gulf of death now between them.

 

      By the end of this emotionally moving movie, we recognize that Chocolate Babies is not really about political action, despite the tiny brave actions that this “gang” has achieved, but about the last stand of a gaggle of individuals who respect and love each other both for what they share and for what makes them each so very different.

       As director Stephen Winter himself describes his characters and their actions: “They’re brave, individualistic, fabulous and tight. They are fighting for their basic dignity.”

       Along with the most powerful of AIDS films, Arthur J. Bressan Jr.’s Buddies (1985), Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances (1986), Jerry Tartaglia’s A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M (1988), Norman René’s Longtime Companion (1989), Roger Spottiswoode’s And the Band Played On (1993), and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), Chocolate Babies leaves one in tears and anger for all those who died of AIDS, both fictional characters and the real human beings who they represent.

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2025).