"Chicken for Linda!": a Mother will do Anything for a Foodie Kid

Nowadays, everybody seems to complain about going to film theaters in the USA: cellphones shining like torches, yapping audiences, the art temples of yore smelling like the kitchen at The Cheesecake Factory, etc. True movie nerds do not stop there. We have a rosary of grievances related to movie distribution! How about blockbusters hogging the majority of screens? Fewer classics' revivals booked, especially of classics? Also, Art House programmers and their patrons stick to the safest bets regarding foreign cinema. Zero-in on animation and inventory does not go beyond Miyazaki and some anime classics. Do not get me wrong, I love them. However, would it kill theaters to book more animated movies from all over the world? 

Every once in a while, along comes something unexpected. The Spanish production "Robot Dreams" (Pablo Berger, 2023) caught the eye of Neon and enjoyed a limited release. I suspect the whimsical New York setting and the virtually wordless plot - no pesky subtitles translating Spanish! - convinced distributors that it would be palatable to local audiences. That, and an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature Film.

You are out of luck if you do not get an Oscar nomination. International awards may push live-action dramas into our radars, but their effectiveness does not apply to animation. Let us consider the case of "Chicken for Linda!" (Sebastian Laudenbach and Chiara Malta, 2023). The French production won the top prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and took the César Award for Best Animated Film. Still, those honors did not warrant it coming to a theater near you. The movie went straight to View-on-demand. You can rent it on the major platforms. It also streams on Crunchyroll and The Criterion Channel. I am glad there is a way to see it, but I would have loved to see it on a screen bigger than home video allows.

The movie starts with a scene of domestic bliss, as Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) and her husband Giulio (Pietro Sermonti) sit down to have dinner with their baby, Linda. Dad cooked his specialty, an Italian recipe of chicken with peppers. Suddenly, things go dark, literally and metaphorically. A dark screen shrouds a commotion, which we soon discover happens to be the man's sudden death. A time jump brings us to a present where Linda (Melinée Leclerc) is a spunky child - nobody reveals her age, but she looks about ten -. She tests her single mother's patience every moment of the day. A misunderstanding leaves Paulette feeling guilty, and as atonement, she promises to cook the girl her favorite dish: the chicken with peppers Dad used to do. As luck would have it, a city-wide strike complicates matters the following day. Buying a chicken becomes a mission worthy of Ethan Hunt. Paulette and Linda go off in a madcap screwball comedy that escalates and drags all their neighborhood along.

Yes, Dad dies in the first scene. Before this mournful setup rubs you the wrong way, remember that the death of parental figures has been a trope of fiction for minors for ages. Have you read the Brothers Grimm stories? They are terrifying. Even Walt Disney, for all his white-bread bonhomie, got in the game. He oversaw the killing of Bambi's mom, traumatizing generations of children. However, Hollywood tends to frame the fateful disappearance of parents as a necessary step to set the young protagonist on the path to self-determination. 

"Chicken for Linda!" takes a different road, contemplating grief and the long road to acceptance of the inevitable. Using a strike as a plot point is something executives would never allow in a US-based production, lest the grunts get any ideas. How European. Moreover, the novelties do not stop there. Parenting choices that would make helicopter parents' blood freeze - or boil - are abundant. A little girl is left alone in charge of her baby brother. Paulette is a dedicated mother, but you can feel her resentment at raising a kid alone. In a display of dubious parenting, she steals a chicken and goes on the lam with her daughter. Linda gleefully assembles her gang to help her kill the chicken. Before you fall into the fainting divan, consider that most of these developments would be familiar to anybody who grew up before the 90s - all right, everything but the chicken-stealing.

"Chicken for Linda!" casts a sympathetic eye on the mess of daily life. The action takes place in a suburban enclave of apartment towers. At crucial moments in the plot, you can see children on their balconies, contemplating what happens below. Their voiceovers demonstrate how they struggle to make sense of a world governed by adults. These are lovely moments of reflection, even more poignant for the respite they offer in a screwball narrative of escalating complications. It all culminates in a delicious scene of anarchy fueled by sugar and kiddie empowerment.   

I would be remiss if I didn't call attention to the beautiful design of the movie. Ground Dr. Seuss in the social realism tradition, infuse him with the spirit of les Fauves, and you will be close to describing "Chicken for Linda!". Brushstrokes of watercolor are visible, reminding you of the humans creating the illusion, like fingerprints all over claymation. Even if they were a product of sneaky CGI, they speak of art grounded in the material world. 

Austere black lines define the contours of monochrome characters, and each one is assigned a signature color. The environments are fanciful and playful, with large swaths of colors freed from rationale. The pavement on a street can be pink, and the sky is yellow. However, the emotions and the conflicts are grounded in a recognizable reality. Grief is palpable in Linda's longing for the food prepared by her deceased father - mom's cooking talents are nil, evidenced by her reliance on microwaved food, so agreeing to make dad's specialty is a significant gesture of atonement. A musical number by the ghostly Giulio offers some comfort to the audience, if not the family he left behind.

It would not be a contemporary movie for children without musical numbers. Several characters get a song that speaks of their deeper longings or deeply personal eccentricities. These are not power ballads written and sung with an eye towards the charts - or streams - but something pricklier. Astrid (Laetitia Dosch) is Paulette's long-suffering sister, always around to pick up the fallout of her family's poor choices. In a particular moment of exasperation, the disciplined yoga teacher confesses her guilty pleasure: candy, lots of candies. She carries them in a pouch and indulges whenever things go wrong. Let us say she will get a sugar high. Bumbling cops, rambunctious children, and one lovelorn truck driver…everybody plays a role in Paulette's quest for the perfect Chicken with Peppers. "Chicken for Linda!" is perfection. Do not miss it.