Chicken with Plums (2012)
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 56
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 15
Whimsical and melancholy, Chicken with Plums is visually striking and dreamily compelling despite its occasional narrative missteps.
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 6
Whimsical and melancholy, Chicken with Plums is visually striking and dreamily compelling despite its occasional narrative missteps.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 1,760
Movie Info
Teheran, 1958. Since his beloved violin was broken, Nasser Ali Khan, one of the most renowned musicians of his day, has lost all taste for life. Finding no instrument worthy of replacing it, he decides to confine himself to bed to await death. As he hopes for its arrival, he plunges into deep reveries, with dreams as melancholic as they are joyous, taking him back to his youth and even to a conversation with Azrael, the Angel of Death, who reveals the future of his children... As pieces of the
Cast
-
Mathieu Amalric
Nasser-Ali -
Edouard Baer
Azraël -
Maria de Medeiros
Faringuisse -
Golshifteh Farahani
Irâne -
Eric Caravaca
Abdi -
Chiara Mastroianni
Adult Lili -
Mathis Bour
Cyrus -
Enna Balland
Lili -
Didier Flamand
The Music Teacher -
Serge Avedikian
Irâne's Father -
Rona Hartner
Soudabeh -
Isabella Rossellini
Parvine -
Frédéric Saurel
Mirza -
Christian Friedel
Cyrus (at 22 Years O... -
Julia Goldstern
Nancy -
Julia Camps y Salat
Young Faringuisse -
Jaouen Gouevic
Irâne's Grandson -
Timothé Riquet
Young Nasser Ali -
Angus Boulaire
Young Abdi -
François Legrand
Schoolmaster -
Laura Baade
Cyrus's daughter -
Dustin Graf
Cyrus's Son 1 -
Nomi Kaisar
Cyrus's Son 2 -
Jean-Michel Dagory
Socrates -
Christian Sengewald
Socrates' Student -
Adolfo Assor
Rasht Bazaar Man -
Ilse Strambowski
Old Woman Bus Driver -
Tim Williams
American Doctor -
Dietmar Ruttiger
Cards Player -
Louis-Marie Audubert
Anonymous Cemetery P... -
Bruno Paviot
Anonymous Cemetery P... -
Philippe Beglia
Anonymous Cemetery P... -
Luc Gentil
Family Doctor -
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Chicken with Plums Trailer & Photos
All Critics (56) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (41) | Rotten (15)
Resurrects the spirit of Middle Eastern fables, albeit with a French twist.
Top CriticThis dreamy, visually inventive Iranian drama functions on so many levels of reality and obsession that it almost ceases to entertain.
Chicken is a movie that begins with a crescendo and doesn't sustain its lyricism.
"Predictability" is not in Satrapi and Paronnaud's vocabulary, and that is no small thing in this or any other movie era. But the whole those parts form never exceeds their sum.
"Chicken With Plums" is a whimsical, sad, diverting and altogether delightful exploration of how cinema can benefit, not only from glancing back at its own past, but by staying open to parallel forms of presentation and play.
This highly stylized, often beautiful rumination on life and art and the choices we make just sort of lies there, waiting to expire.
These moments give flavor, but fail to cohere into any particular taste.
unfurls in a dazzling set of sequences and montages that demonstrates everything shown to us - like marriage and society itself - may not be as it seems, or what it should have been.
While visually scrumptious, the movie struggles to reach a greater profundity that it never quite obtains, but its childlike emulation of a grand tragedy is indelibly precious.
On a scene-by-scene basis, much of Chicken With Plums delivers satisfactorily, but it adds up to much less than the sum of its many parts.
There are pleasures to be found in Chicken with Plums to be certain, but we'd hope for something a little more satisfying next time out from the directing team.
...an admirable trip down the rabbit hole of a lonely man's mind and inspiration, but it loses its way about halfway through the movie and feels like a series of inspired, lovely short films, held together by the barest of threads.
... uneven blend of whimsy and surrealism that's visually compelling but narratively flat.
Takes its time creating sad beauty
[Amalric] anchors Satrapi and Paronnaud's magical visual range and an emotional journey that zips from ecstasy to tragedy and back again.
Satrapi and Parronnaud give us clues but no solution. The fun, for those of us who like fairy tales, is in guessing.
Directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi use various cinematic tricks to examine their protagonist and his life. Voice-over narration, animation and music are a few of the options with which they compose their narration.
It's fascinating as an offbeat storytelling exercise.
Tepid stew.
Fluctuating between the extraordinary and the dull, with sections of narrative explication and tangents, Chicken With Plums can be as frustrating as it is ambitious. It's more like Chicken With Plums -- and the Kitchen Sink.
There are a few writing problems and the melancholy mood weighs heavily, but Amalric's performance remains the film's rallying point.
Audience Reviews for Chicken with Plums
Super Reviewer
First, forget about the title "Chicken with Plums." It suggests sentimentality when the movie's mood is anything but in its sweet melancholy. However, the tone is never oppressive, as it floats along in a variety of styles, including animation, in its expressive examination of mortality and fate, going so far as to also explore the future destinies of the two children. Sure, it may seem silly to the outside observer that Nasser is so torn up about a lost violin. But as the movie sensitively shows by going back and forth in time, there are some very good reasons for his sadness that emanate from a single tragic event.
Super Reviewer
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- The Music Teacher: Sounds come out. But it is empty.It is barren. It is nothing. Life is a breath, Life is a sigh. It is this sigh that you must seize.
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- Adult Lili: Try to spot a nine pound baby under 499 pounds of meat. You'll see it's not easy.
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Foreign Titles
- Huhn mit Pflaumen (DE)
- Chicken With Plums (Poulet aux prunes) (UK)
