Chicken for Linda!

Paulette accuses her daughter unjustly. A ring has gone missing and she thinks Linda took it. Then she finds it. She wants to apologise and says she will do whatever her daughter asks. Linda asks for chicken with peppers; her father used to make it, and her father is dead. Paulette has never made it and does not know the recipe. There is also a general strike that day; every shop is shut and there is no chicken to be had in the city. Mother and daughter go looking for one. They get a chicken from a farm and the chicken escapes. Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach direct. It is a French and Italian co-production made in animation. The film won the grand prize at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. In the animation each character has a colour; the figures are drawn without detail and who they are is known only by colour. The drawing gives the impression of being made by hand with a brush; the lines are deliberately irregular. The matter it treats is grief; neither mother nor daughter speaks of the father and the meal takes its place. The narrative carries the chase after the chicken as comedy and the neighbours get involved. The film keeps an adult audience in view; death is discussed directly. Its limit is form; the drawing will strike some viewers as crude and the narrative is thin. Who it is for: viewers who like European animation and formal experiment. Who it is not for: the drawing is unfamiliar, the story simple, and the subject death.