The absolute star of the big screen this May was not at the Cannes Film Festival. She arrives this Wednesday, May 27 in cinemas, her name is Cocotte and gives her name to a stunning film. Comic and political, dramatic and fantastic, full of ideas and endlessly surprising, the new feature film by György Palfi, best known for the memorable Taxidermy, is much more than the narrative and technical tour de force that undoubtedly constitutes a film entirely devoted to a chicken.
Witness to her birth, the spectator accompanies this being who, although very real, Cocotte is a real chicken, is no less a fictional character. And what fiction!
An original chick, and for that reason ejected from the calibrated and deadly process of industrial breeding where the egg which contained it was born, it does not take long to take surprising initiatives, although always perfectly credible on the part of a gallinaceae. Far from the vast majority of films in which an animal is the central character, not only does she not speak, but she does not behave by imitating humans.
Throughout the sequences, she experiences a journey full of dangers, pursuits, encounters, formative experiences, including losing feathers. The scenario evokes other stories in which animals are the heroes, notably Bremen Musicians of the Brothers Grimm, without ever departing from the uncompromising realism of the way of representing the situations. If they evoke human situations for us, it is by never letting us forget that we project our stereotypes onto them, because animals help us to enter into a relationship with what is different.
Filmed “at chicken height”, Casserole thus produces the very fruitful effect of showing banal situations, or adventures seen a thousand times in adventure films, road movies, buddy movies
and love films, with featherless bipeds as main characters, and which here take on a particular relief and flavor.
A challenge to the spectator’s habits, but a challenge without aggression, the odyssey of the brown hen achieves in a playful and effective way the famous “shift of the gaze” so frequently claimed, so rarely accomplished.
The shape of a hen’s body, its cackling, the particular rhythm of its movements, the singular energy, which can be comical or frightening (Freaks!) which emanates from it, the very depreciative way in which this animal is considered by the imaginations of humans participate in the adventure of the gaze for the spectator.
Rich in gags, in little questions opening up to dizzying hypotheses (yes, the chicken and the egg, or omelettes without breaking eggs), in moments without filter – notably with the rooster in the barnyard where her tribulations have led her – the film plays with multiple codes, which in no way prevent it from having a connection with the most acute contemporary realities, including the ongoing migratory disasters.
A very current tale, György Palfi’s film continues to explore new dimensions, both in terms of film noir and all too real human practices, for better and for worse, in particular by playing up the echoes between industrial breeding at the beginning and the trafficking of men, women and children at the end.
Humans don’t always have the bad role in the film, some are generous and courageous. But they never have the leading role. We have fun and are moved to see Cocotte in action, while having thus removed the humans also allows us to look at them differently.
And the story will experience unexpected developments, with hearty lurches and other violent ones, among which the valiant bird traces the path of its destiny. Apparently for no particular reason, the fact that the film is set in Greece is ultimately justified as heir to the great founding myths.
With Maria Diakopanayotou, Argyris Pandazaras, Yannis Kokiasmenos
