CHICKEN SOUP

A word from the selection committee :

A few weeks before the 2024 US presidential elections, Lili, a young French woman, somewhat adrift in New York, spends her days juggling babysitting jobs for wealthy Manhattan families (including a New York mum played by the brilliant Eleonore Hendricks, the iconic actress in several Safdie brothers’ films) with her love and existential tribulations. What kicks off as a rom-com with its fill of gumption, friendship and predicaments, takes a sharp turn when two grotesque B-movie-style cops stop her for a random ID check. The film then swerves abruptly into a different genre, as the comedy gives way to a Kafkaesque nightmare: Lili’s visa has just expired and she is swept up in the absurd machinery and violence of US immigration policy. More of a political fable – or farce – than a chronicle about migratory injustice, Caroline Milcent’s film never succumbs to the whirlwind it sets in motion. And there lies the spice of this Chicken Soup: in its procedural minutiae, the film maintains an oblique, almost nonchalant distance, mirroring that of its protagonist (played by the astonishing Louise Leroy). Violent though her ordeal may be, it never quite carries the same prospect of loss as that faced by those who have nowhere to return to.  

Rose Hirgorom 

Traduction : Aurore Kahan