France has a long and storied history of producing interesting animated films. I want to discuss two that I've only just gotten a chance to see - Chiara Malta and Sebastien Laudenbach's "Chicken for Linda!" and Jean-Francois Laguionie's "Louise by the Shore."
First, we have "Chicken for Linda!" a rowdy, colorful, traditionally animated feature about a woman named Paulette (Clotilde Hesme) and her eight year-old daughter Linda (Melinée Leclerc). Due to a family tragedy, there's been some difficulty in their relationship. One day a misunderstanding causes Paulette to punish Linda for something she didn't do. To make it up to her, she promises to make Linda a beloved dish of chicken with peppers - but with a general strike going on it seems like it's impossible to buy any chicken. Paulette is desperate, roping her sister Astrid (Laetitia Dosch) into the quest. And a rookie police officer (Estéban). And a truck driver (Patrick Pineau). And a gaggle of Linda's friends and other neighborhood kids.
I love the animation in "Chicken for Linda!" The characters are drawn with black outlines and colored in with exactly one hue for each character. Linda is yellow, Paulette is orange, their cat is bright purple, and a certain troublesome chicken is beet-red. Linda's friends come in sage green and chartreuse and violet. This means you can easily track everyone on screen, no matter how crazy the action gets or how crowded the frame becomes. And there is quite a crowd. I was delighted to discover that "Chicken for Linda!" is an old fashioned slapstick comedy, full of chases and pratfalls and silliness. The story has many unexpected twists and turns, and the cast keeps getting bigger and bigger as more people are drawn into the adventure. And somehow there's room for everyone, even stressed out Astrid getting a song number about devouring sweets. Even better, this is a comedy with heart, where the characters are messy and make lots of mistakes, but love and good food win the day.
It's been a while since I've seen a proper film about community building - the kind that Preston Sturges or the Ealing Studios used to make. Strangers meet in odd circumstances. People from different walks of life connect and work toward a common goal. Broken and damaged relationships get mended and renewed. And of course the kids refuse to be left on the sidelines and try to fix the problem themselves. "Chicken for Linda!" reminds me of how much I like these kinds of films, and is exactly the cinematic experience that I didn't know I needed this season. It's a small and unassuming piece of animation full of exasperated women, befuddled men, riotous children, and poultry on the run. And it's my favorite animated film I've seen in a long while.
Onwards. You might know Jean-Francois Laguionie from "The Painting," a lovely 2D/3D hybrid feature that was released in 2011. His follow-up, "Louise by the Shore," is a much more slow-paced, modest effort rendered in simple traditional animation. I found it very affecting. We follow an elderly woman on holiday named Louise (Diane Dassigny), who misses her train and finds herself alone in a deserted seaside town during the off-season. Resourceful and capable, Louise is soon building herself a new place of residence and exploring the shoreline, not ready to go home. However, winter is coming and the weather is quickly turning bad.
The French title of the film is "Louise en Hiver," which translates as "Louise in Winter." Here winter not only refers to the season but the stage of Louise's life that she is struggling to cope with. The story is a metaphor for dealing with old age and everything that comes with it - loneliness, regret, and sometimes quickly changing circumstances. As Louise explores her shoreline, she also takes trips into her memories of her girlhood and loved ones. Hers is very nearly the only voice we hear in the film, usually through a grumpy, but tender inner monologue.
Reality is a very fluid thing in "Louise by the Shore," with its dreamlike setting and unlikely premise. Surely an entire town wouldn't be totally abandoned during the winter months, would it? The painterly visuals and relatively lack of incident gives the film an existential air, but the atmosphere is light and the company is pleasant. I don't know if I'm supposed to recognize Louise, but she's certainly a memorable personality, and I'm very glad that I got to spend seventy-odd minutes with her and her movie.
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