'Chicken for Linda!' review: Don't miss this gorgeously animated culinary quest | O2K72K9 | 2024-04-08 10:08:01
Hen For Linda! is an immaculate snowball of a film, as what begins as a younger woman's wish to eat a hen dinner shortly spirals into an sudden adventure.
Right here, stolen poultry, pantless cops, and madcap chases via Paris await, along with a few of 2024's most unforgettable animation. Between pops of colour and slapstick comedy, administrators Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach craft a touching mother-daughter story about how even the only issues can unearth long-buried reminiscences — and all of the emotions 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 want when her mom 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 must do is safe the components and prepare dinner the meal.
On the floor, Hen For Linda!'s premise appears pretty simple, even if you throw a basic strike into the combination that makes it inconceivable 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 everyday act like buying hen becomes a quest surprisingly rooted in love and grief.
That emotional depth all starts with the movie's opening shot: A marriage ring ensconced in a inexperienced bubble twirls into view whereas Giulio delivers a voiceover about reminiscence. The depths of our memory, he says, are like a black night time, where forgotten moments wait to be rediscovered. Different colourful bubbles pop into view: reminiscences of Paulette educating baby Linda the names of each 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. Instantly, Giulio's bubble shrinks, then disappears altogether. The opposite comply with go well with, until all we're left with is a bubble of a crying child 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 at the loss prompts a tough 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 flawed. (The family cat Gazza was the wrongdoer all alongside!) Linda's request for hen and peppers becomes not just a approach for her to attach with the father she barely remembers, however a method for Paulette to atone for the pain she brought about her baby as properly. Whilst Linda begins to lose herself in the pleasure of her and her mother's hunt for hen throughout 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 e-book — ensuring to blow the dust off its cover first — and struggles to include her feelings when she comes across the directions she needs. It's just one among 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 much her mother's story as it's hers.
Hen For Linda! is nonstop enjoyable.
</div> With all these stakes in place, Malta and Laudenbach maintain even Hen For Linda!'s most absurd escapades rooted in Paulette's makes an attempt to reconnect with Linda, and in Linda's hopes to reconnect with Giulio via her faint reminiscence of the last meal they shared. If anything, these emotions make the movie's absurdity reach even greater comedic heights, a feat helped alongside even more by Hen For Linda!'s (actually) colourful 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 teacher who encourages her class to remain peaceful, whilst she scarfs down sweet to placate the unbridled rage she feels each time Paulette asks her for something. Truck driver Jean-Michel (voiced by Patrick Pineau) turns into immediately smitten with Paulette after she and Linda stow away in his truck. He's so smitten that he gives to assist them prepare their hen dinner — although he's allergic to hen.
Rounding out the forged are Linda and her group of associates, whose childlike marvel in the face of this grand hunt for hen and peppers marks a stark distinction from the principally confused adults. They seem to be a delightful bunch, especially since Hen For Linda! allows them to be grubby and silly and even a tad morbid. I do not know what made me snort extra: 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 precisely like the sort of excitement a wild youngster 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 movie's animation, which places us in a childlike perspective because of its hand-painted, virtually doodle-esque animation. Vibrant blocks of shade build environments, mild, and shadow, while every character gets a colour of their own. Black strains trace out features on every character's face and physique, but Hen For Linda! shuns over-detailing in favor of more impressionistic work. In case 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 especially shines through the movie's musical sequences. These aren't massive song-and-dance numbers, but fairly fantasies that deliver us deep into characters' minds. One near-lullaby particulars how onerous it may be for folks to sleep, whereas an Astrid-centric track brings us on a candy-coated walk by way of the celebs. Elsewhere, a key number well makes use of colour blocking to evoke all the things from spotlights to movie projection, all in the service of analyzing reminiscence.
Each track takes Hen For Linda!'s animated playfulness to the acute, however the whole movie 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, however Hen For Linda! executes them in a method that's directly visually partaking and impossibly shifting. Actually, they're just a small-scale illustration of the movie's general objective: Taking a simple story about dinner and elevating it to pleasant and sudden places, greater than incomes that exclamation level at the finish of its title alongside the best way.
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