'Chicken for Linda!' review: Don't miss this gorgeously animated culinary quest | T8EUW47 | 2024-04-07 10:08:01
Hen For Linda! is an immaculate snowball of a movie, as what begins as a young woman's wish to eat a hen dinner shortly spirals into an sudden journey.
Right here, stolen poultry, pantless cops, and madcap chases by way of Paris await, together with a few of 2024's most unforgettable animation. Between pops of shade and slapstick comedy, directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach craft a touching mother-daughter story about how even the only things can unearth long-buried reminiscences — and all of the feelings that come with them.
Hen For Linda! understands how "small" tales can still have large stakes.
As its title suggests, Hen For Linda! (Linda veut du poulet! within the unique French) is all about getting eight-year-old Linda (voiced by Mélinée Leclerc) some hen. It's her one wish when her mother Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) needs to make amends after an unfair punishment: She simply needs to eat hen with peppers, a dish her late father Giulio (voiced by Pietro Sermonti) used to make. All Paulette needs to do is secure the elements and prepare dinner the meal.
On the surface, Hen For Linda!'s premise seems pretty simple, even if you throw a basic strike into the combination that makes it unimaginable for Paulette to buy groceries. Yet Malta and Laudenbach add layer after layer of emotional depth to Paulette and Linda's journey, to the point that even an on a regular basis act like shopping for hen turns into a quest surprisingly rooted in love and grief.
That emotional depth all starts with the film's opening shot: A marriage ring ensconced in a green bubble twirls into view whereas Giulio delivers a voiceover about memory. The depths of our reminiscence, he says, are like a black night time, the place forgotten moments wait to be rediscovered. Different colourful bubbles pop into view: reminiscences of Paulette educating child Linda the names of every of her fingers, of Linda entranced by the shiny great thing about Paulette's wedding ceremony ring, of Giulio serving hen with peppers to his family. All of the sudden, Giulio's bubble shrinks, then disappears altogether. The other comply with go well with, till all we're left with is a bubble of a crying baby Linda towards a backdrop as black as night time.
Years later, Paulette's wedding ceremony ring turns into some extent of rivalry between her and Linda, as she believes Linda has traded it at college for a brand new beret. Her anger on the loss prompts a hard slap and a punishing go to to Linda's irritated Aunt Astrid (voiced by Laetitia Dosch), but none of that compares to the guilt Paulette feels when she realizes she was mistaken. (The family cat Gazza was the wrongdoer all along!) Linda's request for hen and peppers becomes not only a approach for her to attach with the daddy she barely remembers, but a method for Paulette to atone for the pain she brought on her youngster as nicely. Whilst Linda begins to lose herself within the pleasure of her and her mom's hunt for hen all through Paris, Paulette stays dogged in her willpower to prepare dinner this meal and salvage her relationship together with her daughter.
In fact, the meal itself brings its personal share of luggage with it. Hen and peppers was the last meal Giulio ever cooked for Linda and Paulette, who now principally cooks up microwave meals. In a single heartbreaking scene, Paulette pores over Giulio's recipe ebook — ensuring to blow the dust off its cowl first — and struggles to include her emotions when she comes across the instructions she needs. It is just one in every of many moments of empathy Hen For Linda! has for Paulette, proving that regardless that Linda's identify is within the title, it is just as a lot her mother's story as it's hers.
Hen For Linda! is nonstop enjoyable.
</div> With all these stakes in place, Malta and Laudenbach hold even Hen For Linda!'s most absurd escapades rooted in Paulette's attempts to reconnect with Linda, and in Linda's hopes to reconnect with Giulio via her faint memory of the last meal they shared. If something, these emotions make the film's absurdity reach even greater comedic heights, a feat helped alongside much more by Hen For Linda!'s (literally) colorful ensemble.
Each of Hen For Linda!'s adult characters are an enthralling bundle of contradictions. Paulette berates Linda for being a thief, only to steal a hen from a farm minutes later. Aunt Astrid is a yoga instructor who encourages her class to remain peaceable, whilst she scarfs down candy to placate the unbridled rage she feels every time Paulette asks her for something. Truck driver Jean-Michel (voiced by Patrick Pineau) becomes immediately smitten with Paulette after she and Linda stow away in his truck. He's so smitten that he gives to assist them put together their hen dinner — regardless that he's allergic to hen.
Rounding out the forged are Linda and her group of buddies, whose childlike marvel in the face of this grand hunt for hen and peppers marks a stark contrast from the principally careworn adults. They seem to be a delightful bunch, particularly since Hen For Linda! permits them to be grubby and silly and even a tad morbid. I don't know what made me chuckle more: Youngsters shaking down a automotive to hinder a police investigation, or Linda debating how greatest to kill a hen. Positive, it is dark, nevertheless it feels exactly like the sort of pleasure a wild baby would have when making hen and peppers from scratch.
Hen For Linda! is a hand-painted marvel.
</div> Part of why the youngsters in Hen For Linda! are so much enjoyable stems from the film's animation, which locations us in a childlike perspective because of its hand-painted, virtually doodle-esque animation. Vibrant blocks of colour construct environments, mild, and shadow, while each character gets a shade of their own. Black strains trace out options on each character's face and body, but Hen For Linda! shuns over-detailing in favor of more impressionistic work. When you ever tire of Disney and Pixar's current CG work that strives for realism, one watch of Hen For Linda! will remind you of the versatility of animation.
Hen For Linda!'s animation particularly shines in the course of the film's musical sequences. These aren't massive song-and-dance numbers, however slightly fantasies that deliver us deep into characters' minds. One near-lullaby particulars how onerous it may be for folks to sleep, while an Astrid-centric music brings us on a candy-coated walk by means of the celebs. Elsewhere, a key number well uses colour blocking to evoke every part from spotlights to movie projection, all within the service of analyzing memory.
Each track takes Hen For Linda!'s animated playfulness to the acute, but the whole film is filled with moments that reaffirm the facility of 2D, hand-painted movies. Take the reminiscence bubbles that open the film. They seem to be a simple idea, but Hen For Linda! executes them in a means that's directly visually partaking and impossibly shifting. Really, they're just a small-scale illustration of the movie's general aim: Taking a simple story about dinner and elevating it to pleasant and sudden locations, greater than incomes that exclamation point at the end of its title alongside the best way.
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