Chicken for Linda!’s animation needs a big screen and emotional processing space

From an initial read of the title, I was under the impression that Chicken for Linda! was about a little girl who really wanted a pet chicken. I was wrong. The French animated movie from directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach takes place in modern France and follows a little girl named Linda who really wants to eat chicken. Specifically chicken with peppers. For Linda’s mom, Paulette, who mostly serves up frozen meals and doesn’t really cook at all, making this dish is already a challenge.

And thanks to an ongoing general strike in their town, all the grocery shops are closed, which makes this quest even harder. But Paulette feels really guilty about wrongfully punishing Linda for swiping a treasured ring, so she heads to a farm to buy a live chicken. This begins Linda and Paulette’s daunting quest to kill, cook, and eat this chicken, something neither of them has even fathomed doing before.

It’s much less morbid than it sounds. Actually, it’s unexpectedly funny, while also being a bittersweet reflection on grief and memory.

Image: Gebeka Films/GKIDS

Linda approaches her mission with bright-eyed determination that softens the hearts of authority figures and convinces an assortment of inexperienced people to take a stab at killing and preparing the chicken. Eventually, we learn just why Linda is fixated on this particular chicken-and-peppers meal: It’s something her late father, who she barely remembers, used to cook.

All the characters in the movie come to life in single-color blocks, rendered with distinct outlines. There’s a lovely tangibility to how they move: The cat operates as one big blob, except when it stretches out its paws. The policeman wriggles his long limbs around a drooping telephone cord. From a distance, the chickens are splashes of color and a curling outline, darting across the screen. Against the painted background, each frame is vibrant and dynamic.

Chicken for Linda! is chock-full of hijinks, with a lot of physical humor and hilarious situations that stem from the absurd nature of the plot. A cop pulls a gun on the chicken, since that’s the only way he knows how to possibly kill it. After stealing the chicken, Linda and her mom leap into the back of a vegetable delivery truck and hide out among crates of watermelons. There are moments when the movie lags, long chase scenes that get a little too abstract, and a handful of musical sequences that feel like they’re from another movie entirely. But even among the shenanigans and the loftier animated sequences, the movie is anchored in Linda and her desire for the coveted meal, her desire to connect with her father.

Image: Gebeka Films/GKIDS via Everett Collection

That family dynamic, the element that gives this otherwise lighthearted movie its weight, isn’t saved for an emotional gut punch at the end of the story, or turned into a nagging reminder constantly brought up by characters. Instead, it’s simply present in the background of the movie, seamlessly woven into every thread as we learn more about Linda, her mother, their relationship to each other, and how they relate to the rest of the characters we meet.

Linda’s grief and her inability to even really register it eventually builds up to a cathartic point, but it isn’t a heavy-handed emotional release. It’s a subtler epiphany, as she gets the chance to remember key details about her father. And through the process of seeking this moment together, Linda and her mother are finally able to connect, and to open up to their community, who all came together to help them try to eat this dang chicken. The movie is the perfect blend of silliness and serious, deep emotion that never becomes overstated, all told in bright, painted colors that deserve to be seen in theaters to experience their full glory.

Chicken for Linda! is out in select theaters starting April 5.