‘Chicken For Linda!’: Annecy Review

Dir/scr: Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach. France, Italy. 2023. 76mins

Eight-year-old Linda (voiced by Mélinée Leclerc) is unfairly punished by her mother, Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) for a crime she didn’t commit. To make amends, Paulette promises to cook her daughter chicken with peppers – a dish that her late husband used to prepare for them. There are two problems with this plan: first is the strike that has paralysed Paris, shutting all the shops that would normally sell the key ingredient. And secondly, there’s the fact that Paulette has no idea how to cook anything that doesn’t come in a microwavable plastic tray. Over a chaotic day, the quest for chicken sees a run-in with the law and the start of a new love. It also unites the residents of the small housing project where Linda and her mother live, and provides closure for the still-grieving pair. It’s an appealing little charmer of a film, captured with a pleasingly lithe and lively animation style

 A sensitively-handled story about processing the loss of a loved one

Screening in Annecy having premiered in the Acid section of Cannes, this is the first collaboration between writer-directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach. It’s also Malta’s first feature animation – she previously directed the live-action Simple Women, which premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. Laudenbach, meanwhile, returns to Annecy having previously shown his feature animation The Girl Without Hands in the main competition in 2016.

Chicken For Linda! shares with that film a striking, sparse animation technique but, whereas The Girl Without Hands was a fairytale fantasy, this is firmly rooted in in the real world – albeit one featuring plenty of slapstick humour involving a live chicken, an obese, compulsive eating cat and a lorry full of watermelons. And that real-world authenticity is key to its appeal; younger audiences will likely recognise themselves in Linda and her friends, while older viewers should relate to the film’s gently comic view on the stresses of solo parenting.

The film’s initial impact will , however, likely come from its distinctive visual style. Laudenbach’s character design is minimal, almost abstract at times. But a few cursory lines and a block of colour – each character has their own specific hue – can speak volumes when handled as deftly as they are here. There’s a pleasing textured quality to the drawing style; we can see the brushstrokes in Margaux Duseigneur’s handsome backdrops, giving a sense of movement, of vitality, even when the characters themselves are static.

There’s a freshness, too, in the voice performances, particularly those of the younger cast members who bring a peppy energy to Linda and her friends. Music is another asset, with Clément Ducol (who served as the Music Director on Leos Carax’s Annette) bringing an idiosyncratic charm to songs about sleep deprived parents and the stress-eating of sweets during domestic crises.

The plot, if you unpick it, is a wisp of a thing: a little girl wants chicken for dinner, her mother will stop at nothing to get it for her. But underneath the bicycle chases, the smashed plates and toppled furniture, the tree full of shoes and sweaters, there’s a sensitively-handled story about processing the loss of a loved one.