Linda Wants Chicken!: An animated film as hilarious as it is poignant (review)

A kid demands chicken with peppers, and an entire city is turned upside down. A great film about grief

“Linda wants chicken!” » Very pretty title which sounds like a summons. And that’s a bit the case: Paulette has unfairly punished her daughter Linda, and to accept her mother’s apologies, the kid tells her to cook her late father’s recipe for chicken with peppers. But a national strike brings France to a standstill, and stores are desperately closed. Paulette’s promise turns out to be more complicated than expected to keep, even with the help of the whole city… Far from the world of her impressive tale The Girl Without Hands (2016), Sébastien Laudenbach signs with Chiara Malta (Simple Women) a story of mourning disguised as an incredible comedy – the word almost seems to have been invented for the film. A colorful object where each character is characterized by thick black lines and a very specific color: yellow, purple, green… Simple without being simple, this visual horizon allows us to address adult questions while remaining at the level of children. We think of Little Nicholas (the books by Sempé and Goscinny, like the animated film released last year), to which Linda wants chicken! borrows a state of mind that is both very modern and very 1960s. Full of gags and narrative exploits (the prologue on the death of the father, a lachrymal masterpiece), the chase for the poultry becomes a life drive for a widow and an orphan who had put themselves in stasis. A form of euphoric and contagious resistance against fate and the established order.

Of Chiara Malta, Sébastien Laudenbach With the voices of Mélinée Leclerc, Clotilde Hesme, Laetitia Dosch… Duration 1 hour 16 minutes. Released October 18, 2023