Chicken review – plucky chicken wins in a story of incredible development | Video

HHungarian film director György Pálfi has always had only one talent: an actor of the genre who is free to make a romantic film with hundreds of other films (Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen), a dark drama about a dog about a taxidermist who loves cats (Taxidermy(Huckle). By comparison, his latest, Hen is a classic. That’s saying something because it’s a movie where the main character is a black chicken (played by about eight chicken characters and not CGI) who sees a world where people treat each other like animals. Comparisons have undoubtedly been made to several recent productions and animal shows, such as Andrea Arnold’s Cow and Jerzy Skolimowski’s donkey-centric EO, but Hen is lighter and more entertaining, if one can say that the film has a long section about human trafficking and the deadly consequences.

How Pálfi manages to pull this off is a movie mystery, but it probably has to do with his subtle touch and his ability to empathize with his avian hero without resorting to anthropomorphic stereotypes. This chicken behaves like a real chicken because it combines smart survival skills with fearlessness to the point of success. For example, after escaping from a battery farm in Greece where they hatch (a black dot in a sea of ​​yellow chicks), they manage to escape from the clutches of a truck driver who is preparing to cook dinner. Just when you think you’ve found safety, the fox (incredibly trained, and not CGI as far as I know) starts chasing him, chasing him down a busy street while a chicken crosses the street with the blithe idiocy that makes chickens so cute. The wolf doesn’t stand a chance. Incidentally, the film has a disclaimer at the end confirming that no animals were harmed during the making of the film, which is a relief.

In fact, the cinematic universe in which the story takes place is cruel to homo sapiens. The chicken ends up in a disused restaurant overlooking the sea, owned by an elderly man (Yannis Kokiasmenos) who gives him a little light after he keeps escaping the mangy cage where he is kept. No wonder he longs to get out: he is tormented by other chickens when the rooster, a miserable creature who, like the rest of the flock, has lost many of his neck feathers due to the violence of hen against hen, lives violently with him every day. Morally the people are not good, especially the friend of the daughter of the chief, who is associated with criminals who smuggle refugees who hide them in restaurants, filled with dark rooms and water if they are lucky – like the chickens we saw earlier. And although not everything ends well for any of the people, there is a small consolation in seeing that life goes on for some creatures. This movie is amazing in animal training and technical editing, and it’s all incredibly entertaining.