Chicken for Linda!, an animated film by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, is, in nearly every frame, a joy to behold. In an era where Disney and Pixar often strive to create poreless, hyperreal fantasy lands, Chicken for Linda! celebrates being its identity as a made thing, with visible brush strokes and expressive line art that wobbles back and forth between cartoon and kinetic gesture drawing.
Each character has their own signature color that makes them visually distinct. (The cat gets two: purple for its body and pink for its butthole. It’s an amazing cat and deserves all the colors it wants.) It evokes rather than exactly represents, which is a refreshing variation from the genre’s norm. In close-ups, each character’s color tends to stay more or less inside their borders, but in wide shots, it’s not uncommon for their lines to float in a kind of amoebic bar of color. Squish them as close together as you like in some of these images, and it still feels like they can’t quite touch—an appropriate visual metaphor for a film featuring so many family squabbles.
The best and most gorgeous art is reserved for the handful of night scenes, when the characters are simply brightly colored lines on a black background, like living, luminous scratch art or animated Lite Brites. If there’s a Kickstarter for Malta and Laudenbach to do a whole film in this style, I’m pitching in.
All in all, Chicken for Linda’s art gives it the feel of a lovingly recreated picture book. Indeed, the animation of this animated film is the shakiest part of its visuals: the rapid flickering and winking-out of shades and lines when the characters are in motion sometimes hurt my eyes. That’s a real drawback in an exuberant—sometimes even frenetic—comedy with a lot of running around. Still, I’ll happily forgive all that for this kind of nostalgic-but-lively visual feast.
But for me, the rest of the film seldom lives up to its art. Chicken for Linda! is beautiful … but it’s also aggravating, unfunny, poorly paced, and so muddled about its presumed audience that I have no idea who this is even for. The comedy is a one-thing-after-another, empathy-free onslaught of bizarre choices—rarely with the concision or goofy wit of truly great slapstick—and it heaps up without meaning or structure, like someone is endlessly pulling gag-a-square toilet paper off the roll. Maybe kids would like it, but what would they make of the movie’s emotional beats about the grinding frustrations of mundane but unsolvable adult sibling conflict? Or the shock and guilt of impulsively slapping your child?
Linda (Melinée Leclerc) is a sunny but incorrigible eight-year-old girl. Her father died when she was a toddler—in the middle of serving up a delicious homemade meal of chicken and peppers—and since then, she and her beleaguered mother, Paulette (Clotilde Hesme), have been living off frozen dinners and wearily going through the same minor spats over and over again. In particular, Linda keeps stealing Paulette’s engagement ring (which Paulette treasures but is often too sad to wear). One day, however, Paulette wrongly blames her for its disappearance. When the truth comes out, she promises Linda anything she wants in recompense, and Linda asks for chicken and peppers.
It should be easy, but all the shops are on strike, and Paulette can’t cook. It’s a simple premise that you could easily fit a lot of antics and mother-daughter bonding into, but Chicken for Linda! rejects all the natural complications of its setup and instead hits the gas way too fast. If you want your comedy to escalate naturally, your ordinary mom cannot land this quickly on “I will steal a live chicken from this family’s henhouse.”
It’s not even that it’s a weird escalation—although it is, one grounded in neither an extreme situation nor extreme characterization—it’s that it needlessly narrows down the plot’s comedic possibilities. The whole movie is now a cat-and-mouse game of chicken pursuit, as Paulette and Linda try to get away with the bird while others—a cop, the teenage son of the robbed family farm, and Paulette’s exhausted sister—try to stop them. After a while, the action only feels tenuously related to why we’re here. At some point, it feels like Malta and Laudenbach try to take a wider and more political view of France, folding in not only strikes but riots, community action, and civic resistance, but it’s way too much for this slight and silly a film to take on.
In the end, Chicken for Linda! simply wears out its welcome. Everything goes on too long and is worse for it. Initially, I was amused and unsurprised that a French film would be so frank about the butchery of Linda’s chicken—sure, France has a stronger food culture than America, it makes sense that even a children’s film there is more willing to admit where the meat comes from. But this chicken gets dragged to and fro for almost an hour. After that many escape and rescue attempts, it starts to feel like a character, which makes its unceremonious conversion into delicious couscous seem like a narrative fault, not a cultural difference. (It’s also weird to me that a city kid raised on frozen food would be this eager to kill an animal she’s been hanging out with all day.) It’s just one of several signs this is a good short film wrongly stretched out to feature length.
So how much can one stellar aspect make up for everything else? All I can say is that if you’re a fan of animation and want to see the genre embrace different art styles and approaches, you should see this, and I hope the rest of the film makes you happier than it did me. Chicken for Linda! has been widely praised, so if anyone else has seen it, I’m very curious about your thoughts. I’ll trade you some chicken and peppers for them.
Chicken for Linda! is streaming on the Criterion Channel.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Department of
Conversation
Year of the Month update:
Coming in February, you can sign up to write about anything from 2016 along with these fine folks:
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rogue One
TBD: Cori Domschot: Ghostbusters, Hidden Figures, and/or Sing
Tentative: Sam Scott: The Neon Demon
Feb 7th: Gillian Nelson: Queen of Katwe
Feb. 11th: Lauren James: Inside
Feb. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Milo Murphy’s Law
Feb. 18th: JRoberts548: Silence
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Pete’s Dragon
And there’s still time to join this team for 1947:
TBD: John Anderson: T-Men
Tentative: John Anderson: Nightmare Alley
Jan. 23rd: Cori Domschot: Down to Earth
Jan. 27th: Cliffy73: Miracle on 34th Street
Jan. 31st: Pluto’s Blue Note
What did we watch?
Okalahoma Crude – In 1913, fiercely independent Faye Dunaway tries her hand at drilling for oil on her own, challenged by Jack Palance and Big Oil, which wants to buy the mineral rights for pennies on the dollar. Her estranged dad John Mills arranges for drifter and veteran George C. Scott to be her helper and bodyguard. Conflict between Big Oil and our heroes and between Scott and Dunaway ensues. Directed by Stanley Kramer, but don’t look for any social messages outside of “Big Oil sucks.” This tries to be a comedy-drama but ends up pretty scattered as a result. But the cast is too good not to be interesting most of the time, especially Palance as the big bad. And the cinematography (with California substituting for Oklahoma) is gorgeous, the sort of thing we saw a lot in late 60s and 70s westerns (and the sort of thing Mel Brooks was imitating for comic effect). Plus there is, for the time, a very strange and somewhat frank discussion between Dunaway and Scott where she tells him she wishes she had both male and female sex organs so she could screw herself and be done with anyone else. Not the sort of thing you heard in the 70s.
Kojak, “Nursemaid” – The key to putting together a case against a gang of gunrunners is middle aged Jewish accountant Kay Medford, so the cops take her into protective custody and Kojak slowly convinces her to testify before the grand jury. The plot is something of a mess, lurching from one event to the next, but Medford’s interactions with Savalas are fun, and it’s different to do this sort of story and not have it revolve around a hot young lady who falls for the cop. (Kojak is not your usual unmarried TV cop, with only two romances so far. I think that will continue to be the case.)
The Front Page (1931) – made this the next pick for my hundred-years challenge without realising that it shared a director (Lewis Milestone) with my 1930 pick, All Quiet on the Western Front. One of those weird things where you don’t notice that somebody / something exists and then as soon as you do, they / it are everywhere. Obviously this is mostly known as the inspiration for His Girl Friday these days (and it was on my list because it’s an extra feature on that movie’s Criterion release) but having not seen that one in a good few years, I didn’t find myself drawing too many difficult comparisons and enjoyed this pretty well as its own thing. Lots of archaic slang, which is mostly delightful (apart from when it’s occasionally just unpleasant) and a solid cast of character actors (including Edward Everett Horton, who is always fun).
I prefer His Girl Friday, but not by much. (The messiness of the editor forcing his reporter back to work plays better without the sexual tension, even if the sexual tension in HGF is wonderful.)
Yeah agreed, I prefer His Girl Friday but it’s not a personal favourite and I wouldn’t say the gap between them is a big one. Honestly the biggest difference for me is the sound recording, I really struggle with the dialogue in early sound films and fully support them being remade a few years later when they’d figured out where to put the microphones.
Shōgun, “Anjin”
The first episode, and we’re off with a bang–and with a lot of complex goals and moralities crashing into each other. One of my favorite things historical fiction can do is relate a (near-)vanished perspective from the inside out, accepting as part of its characters’ moral and psychological landscapes and, instead of judging it or laughing at it, looking at how they live and die with it. (Rome, for all its exuberant faults, did this in a way I really liked.) This nails that aspect, and there’s an immediate lack of fucking around about it. Spectacular start. I’m riveted by Toranaga, in particular, but Blackthorne actually gets my favorite character moment of the episode, when he’s stunned, traumatized–and, despite what he’ll say later–reflexively awed by a near-case of seppuku.
Girls Will Be Girls – This is the kind of undersung gem I like discovering on these early year indie watches. It’s a little more slowly paced than is good for it, and the general shape of its coming-of-age story is familiar enough that it wouldn’t make a splash by premise alone. But the details and so specific and realized, overlapping between the universal and familiar and the culturally foreign that it teaches you a bit about people near and far.
Mira, a teenage girl in an Indian boarding school, is one of the first female head prefects named. Her new narcing duties coincide with teenage maturation and creates friction between herself and her schoolmates and her mother. She starts seeing an older boy with a kind demeanor and a patient air of experience… but he’s a teenage boy and there’s no getting around that barrier to responsible humanity. The way he charms the mother complicates things further, as does the culture’s kibosh on any sort of sexual exploration. Throw in an angry rejected suitor and Mira has her hands full.
This is a first feature and it wobbles like one for a while, but the final observations on each of the characters – and the drawing of a fantastic performance from the lead – is very effective. It’s been favorably compared to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and this is a good description.
Wild at Heart – Still more fond of this than Lost Highway, even if I dunno if it’s a better movie, because it’s more in it’s own pocket universe: where the Wizard of Oz references are plentiful, Isabella Rossellini has badly dyed hair with the roots showing, speed metal bands can croon Elvis, and gangs attack people on a sunny day for no reason. My friend’s observations included “Sailor stims the same way you do, crooning baritone songs” and “Of COURSE Laura Palmer is Glinda in David Lynch’s world.” I noted that Sailor and Lula remind me a lot of a couple I’m friends with, especially how Sailor is impulsive but also grounds Lula’s reactions to the world, “wild at heart and weird on top.”
I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainerd – Really compelling, as much about Ron Padgett’s memories of his friend Joe Brainard as Brainard’s own perceptions laid out in voiceover and archival footage, some of it in direct contrast to the audio. Padgett also remembers Brainard as comfortable with his sexuality – cue the voiceover of Brainard remembering trying to seem straight as a young man. Moving and packs a lot into 24 minutes, especially Padgett’s final words. On Criterion.
A late short film by Faith Hubley, Witch Madness, about the persecution of witches that was neat and felt personal to her, but nowhere near her earlier work.
Revisiting Wild At Heart soon, I think it has a lesser reputation because of its hermeticism, feeling closed off instead of opaque. But that cast!
See, I’m a sucker for hermetic art (puts on The Smiths again).
The Legend Of Billie Jean — why did no one tell me this whips all kinds of ass? Helen Slater and Christian Slater go on the run with a foulmouthed Yeardley Smith after shooting a pervert who was covering up for his douchebag son wrecking Christian’s motorbike, Helen watches a Joan of Arc movie and gets a cool haircut and becomes a symbol of youthful revolt against adult oppression. Director Matthew Robbins wrote The Sugarland Express, which I have not seen but am now extremely interested in, and he does a great job working the vibe of young folks on the lam in a lived-in location (Corpus Christi, full of gas stations and bridges and beaches and the occasional wealthy suburb) that feels desperate and thrilling at the same time, this is not hard-edged realism but it’s not a total fantasy either. And if Helen Slater is not Renee Falconetti she is great here, shouldering the burden of her bratty brother and fellow rebels while coming up with decent plans to keep them on the run and turn the tables on their pursuers, there is some savvy media manipulation running through this and some blunt and effective looks at how Billie Jean’s rebellion is immediately co-opted and commercialized by her enemies. Ultimately too warmhearted to be the 80s Freeway but it’s a mile marker down that road and the soundtrack is great, Pat Benatar’s theme is another “where the fuck has this been” moment. I think this had a larger cultural footprint for people a bit older than me but it’s definitely not as beloved as what John Hughes was farting out in this vein at the same time, and that is some bullshit, at least I caught up with it now. Fair is fair, Billie Jean rules, tell that to the judge.
Hacks, Season Three, Episode Five, “One Day”
I don’t have much to say about this episode. Normally bottle episodes (though this is technically a reverse of that) are really great and let you delve into the characters and their relationships, but this show is built around these two and their relationship, so there’s not really much new here, and whatever is interesting is in the text.
Love seeing people do Deb’s job less well than her. One of them is obviously just overly literal, the other is trying way too hard to be relatable.
I grew up around nature so generally I find the experience overrated, but I must admit the visuals of trees and creeks are nicer than the fake ugly bullshit this show is usually showing us.
I loved the two of them shouting in unison: “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t even know you!” Very Sideshow Bob and the rakes in terms of it getting even funnier the longer it went on, and I love how it pushes a fundamentally dark idea into absurdist territory.
I grew up in rural New Hampshire, so my mutual joke with my sister about camping is “We did that, it was called our childhoods.” Using an outhouse? Building fires? Sleeping in cold temperatures next to a stove? Been there, done that.
Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Episode 7. “Arcadio y el Paraíso Liberal”. First time.
The biggest episode so far in terms of scope, as Macondo goes to war, and war comes to Macondo. The former by way of Coronel Aureliano Buendía leading a guerrilla against the conservative government, the latter after Arcadio is put in charge of Macondo in Aurelialno’s absence. Aureliano’s story here is some of the most realistic material seen in the show so far, though there’s still space for subjective fancy. The battle scenes are properly harsh and bloody, as they should be given Latin American history. Aureliano is steadily becoming a convincing leader, fighting like the best and journeying far and long to save his men, giving a major speech to steady their purpose, making allies and winning battles.
This in stark contrast to Arcadio, who lets power go to his head: he dresses in Napoleonic garb, bosses the people of Macondo, imposes ridiculous taxes, legalizes his brother (actually his father)’s land grab and trains his soldiers in marksmanship (badly). Like his grandfather, he has a man killed for a petty slight, though José Arcadio turned that into a new beginning; all it does for Arcadio is turn Macondo against him. He nearly kills the former regent, if not for Ursula standing up to him and effectively becoming the leader of Macondo. Marleyda Soto is great in this episode again, commanding all the authority she can while still being just a moment away from despair and heartbreak.
Speaking of despair and heartbreak, we also see Pietro Crespi have his hard broken by a second Buendía woman, as Amaranta rejects his marriage proposal for no stated reason. Love can’t defeat spite in this family. Crespi plays and sings beautifully in a desperate plea, then takes his life when it fails. He might be better off, as Arcadio then ignores Pilar Ternera’s prophecy and a warning from a liberal coronel, allowing the conservative army to massacre the people of Macondo, bringng the town’s early history to a close of sorts. The scene is chaotic and horrifying, and despite Arcadio’s chicanery and egotism it’s not hard to feel for him as he runs and pleads for his life and the bodies fall around him. He is afforded some dignity by the narration giving us a compassionate glimpse into his mind in the final hours, and by some beautiful words to his wife and child and a defiant exclamation in front of the execution squad (“¡Cabrones! ¡Que viva el Partido Liberal”; one of the most unforgettable lines of the novel for me). He is the first Buendía to die, signalling a turn for the worse for the entire family. And as we well know from the opening lines, he won’t be the last Buendía that the war brings to an execution squad.
Hmm, very curious if cautious. I don’t like to “second screen” but maybe good watching while I’m a little distracted with some repetitive task? My wife handles the laundry but maybe I’ll volunteer to do a load, or better yet, shred some old work papers and drown out the dialog?
I remember discovering the French dot their animated cat anuses in April and the Extraordinary World. That’s the main thing I remember about that movie, which may be more of a statement about American me than the movie itself.
Much as I consider myself a cat movie connoisseur, I can’t say I’ve kept detailed records of how individual movies portray their buttholes. Maybe need to rewatch everything now.
The people need to know.
Yeah, I could see this being a case where a little bit of distraction goes a long way–it could smooth out some of the more frustrating aspects while still leaving you free to enjoy the artwork.
Re: the animated cat anatomy, I wound up thinking of the fantastic The Worst Person in the World, where a cartoonist makes an indignant case for an adaptation of his cult cat comic leaving in “the starfish,” rather than sanitizing it. I think we can cobble together a whole cat butt cinematic universe from all this.
“Its anus looks like an asterisk.” – Bender Bending Rodriguez
Catbutt Universe, soon to join Oven Cat in the Magpies dictionary
Nice write-up, this sounds very frustrating. The part about the chicken becoming a character and then seems like a real issue, and it reminded me of the very funny documentary short Tungrus, which has a similar dynamic but because it is a short it makes that whiplash work, strong recommend if you have 15 minutes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4BzwEo51-mw
Oh, that was great. Wonderful turn into dark comedy (that barrel shaking and then … ceasing to shake is such a hilariously grim punchline) with great actual human and chicken setup for it. And excellent bonus cats.
I think the more time you put into establishing a character the more careful you have to be. Obviously if they, like, lived on a farm that would be part of the fabric of their lives (and maybe that’s what it was aiming for) but it’s a tricky balance.
I loved this movie lol. I didn’t find it poorly paced. I can understand and agree if folks didn’t vibe with it though. I get where you are coming from, but for some reason, none of this bothered me. I loved the story of how it’s about a mother and daughter reconnecting via a dish, but it’s not REALLY about the dish. For me, the music was the weakest part since it was partially a musical and it didn’t land with me.