Review of Chicken with Plums (2011) by Mike C — 09 Jun 2013

Almost a 9/10, maybe even a 10/10. Maybe it tried too hard to be cute and fantastical. Maybe that is part of the allure. I don't like the title and I thought it was an Iranian movie, but it's actually by all accounts a French movie set in Iran. And it's quite good.

Amalric is Nasser-Ali, a violin player who is looking to replace his broken violin. We're not sure how it was broken, but we soon learn he cannot replace it and decides to die instead. And we know he will, in fact, be dead and buried in eight days. The story is those eight days and all the flashbacks that tell the story of Nasser Ali and his violin and the deaths of both.

Amalric was the blinking guy in The Diving Bell in the Butterfly. I thought he looked familiar, but truly, in Diving Bell, he's mostly just a face. And he pulls off both roles. Other than that, the movie is just pretty great. I'm a bit surprised it was not a Foreign Film Oscar candidate. The story has an epic quality but is not forced, and there are many artistic liberties in the film that really give it a nice touch. Ebert gave it four stars (out of four) and I can agree with that.