A mother hopes to make amends with her daughter by cooking a special chicken dish in this striking French animation full of colours and vitality, set against the backdrop of a strike that has caused their town to come to a standstill.
Review #2,638
Dir. Sebastien Laudenbach & Chiara Malta
2022 | France, Italy | Animation, Drama, Comedy | 73 min | 2.35:1 | French
PG (passed clean)
Cast: Clotilde Hesme, Laetitia Dosch, Esteban, Patrick Pineau, Claudine Acs
Plot: Paulette realizes she has unfairly punished her daughter Linda. To make up for it, she promises to cook her a chicken with peppers, even though she cannot cook at all. But where to find a chicken on a strike day, when all the shops are closed?
Awards: Won Cristal – Best Picture & Gan Foundation Award for Distribution (Annecy)
International Sales: Charades
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Mother-Daughter Relationship; Workers’ Strike; Community
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Screener – Singapore Film Society Showcase
Spoilers: No
A sweet, charming and endlessly vibrant animation, Chicken for Linda! recently competed at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and should do well outside of France in the festival circuits, or perhaps even commercially in certain territories.
Despite its short runtime of about 70+ minutes, it packs quite a lot and is very well-paced, sometimes even breathlessly, such as the intense lorry-cum-bicycle chase sequence in the middle of the film.
Linda’s Mom hopes to make amends with her young daughter after an unfortunate argument by cooking a special chicken dish as per Linda’s request. However, supermarkets and farms are shut due to a planned strike in their town that has brought everything to a standstill.
As such, Chicken for Linda! is both a film about precious mother-daughter relationships as well as what it means for the community (of kids) to rally together to try to find their friend a chicken.
“Did it exist if you don’t remember it?”
There is an amusing irony to several scenes—as adults refuse to work, children bustle with activity, while a bumbling policeman becomes the subject of social embarrassment.
In one striking scene, kids become the protestors, creating chaos in their estate. All of these sociopolitical subtexts are certainly not lost, particularly with the recent French protests over Macron’s unpopular pension reforms.
Stripped of this dimension, Chicken for Linda! doesn’t lose much of its quality—even with its somewhat minimalist animation style, it’s such a colourful work full of vitality.
The characters are drenched in different colours—yellow, orange, blue, purple, green, and more; while it may be an artistic choice, it is also symbolic of not just cosmopolitan cities but cosmopolitan small-towns.
Grade: B+
Promo Clips:
Eternality Tan 