TIFF23: “Chuck Chuck Baby” - Film Review
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
A chicken factory doesn’t seem like the most natural setting for a musical, but that’s exactly where writer/director Janis Pugh tells her story. Chuck Chuck Baby, both the film’s title and the whimsical name of the chicken factory, is a fever dream of a musical with its feet firmly planted on the ground. Helen (Louise Brealey) isn’t sure how her life got to this point. She’s working nights at a chicken processing plant and living in a small room of a house she shares with her husband (Celyn Jones), his new girlfriend (Emily Fairn), their fussy baby, and Helen’s sweet, elderly mother-in-law (Sorcha Cusack). Her mundane, exhausting life is turned upside down when Joanne (Annabel Scholey) returns. The two were something like high school sweethearts, but they never acted on it back then. They soon learn that the emotions of a teenage crush don’t easily disappear.
Chuck Chuck Baby isn’t your average musical. The characters don’t break into the choreographed song and dance of a Stephen Sondheim show, and it’s not a musical in the style of a John Carney flick where the characters are musicians. Chuck Chuck Baby relies on radios and record players to kick off its brief musical numbers, allowing the audience to see real people in real life enjoying music. Favorite songs are meant to be sung in the car on the way to work, alone in the bedroom, and with friends, which is exactly what happens in Chuck Chuck Baby. There are no original songs, but there’s plenty of borrowing from some of the great singers of the past. Neil Diamond, Janis Ian, Manhattan Transfer, and more make for a foot-tapping soundtrack.
Courtesy of TIFF
Every few songs, there’s a bit of stylized polish added to make the sequence more of a performance. As Helen sings along to a song outside a bar as she longingly looks at Joanne, multicolored umbrellas dance and twirl in front of her. Of course it’s pouring rain, as it always is when there’s a big, romantic moment. The two gaze at each other, desperately trying to say everything that needs to be said. There’s also a bizarre singalong to “Les Fleurs” by Minnie Riperton on the chicken processing factory floor. It comes complete with chicken feathers floating down like snow, a lab coat striptease, and chicken carcasses being smacked on the conveyor belt along with the beat.
Joanne and Helen are the classic romantic pair. Where Helen is insecure, melancholy, and lonely, Joanne is cool, carefree, and confident. Joanne is introduced as a heartthrob. The audience first sees her in a plaid jacket with a fur collar, cuffed jeans, boots, and leaning against her baby blue classic car. Joanne is indisputably cool in the style of James Dean, and her charisma is utterly magnetic. It’s no surprise that Helen is almost immediately smitten once Joanne comes back into her life. Helen becomes noticeably lighter as she spends time with Joanne, a smile seemingly effortlessly appearing on her face. Their budding romance makes them act like seventeen-year-olds again in the best way. The years, the heartache, the pain they’ve accumulated since they last saw each other fall away and they’re given the gift of youth once again.
Courtesy of TIFF
Aside from Joanne, Helen’s main source of friendship and support is the the women she works with at the chicken processing plant. These women spend hours every day standing in front of a conveyor belt, putting plucked chicken carcasses into plastic bags. Chuck Chuck Baby doesn’t delve too deeply into the intricacies of the relationships among these women, but anyone who has worked long hours at a minimum wage job knows the intensity of those bonds. The terrible working conditions seem to conflate the loyalty of the friendships that are born out of low wage labor. Chuck Chuck Baby celebrates the way the women care for one another deeply and profoundly. They’re a support system like no other because they have to be. Because the other people in their lives aren’t nearly as dependable.
Chuck Chuck Baby is bizarrely lovely, a testament to finding love in the strangest of places and fighting like hell for the people you care about. Sure, it’s a little goofy with its singalongs and mannequin heads passing notes between lovers, but Chuck Chuck Baby captures the sweetness of life. Sometimes you fall so dumbly, head-over-heels in love that you scream-sing along to “Goin’ Out of My Head” by Little Anthony & The Imperials. Maybe that comes across as too saccharine to the overly cynical, but Chuck Chuck Baby has no time for those who don’t have a funny bone in their bodies. Life’s too short to not fall in love amid a snowfall of chicken feathers.
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.