Katie (Alexandra Lamy, MODERN LOVE) is a single-mother living in a depressing flat with her eight-year-old daughter Lisa (Mélusine Mayance, SARAH'S KEY) and works in factory assembly line packaging chemicals. A quickie stand with Spanish co-worker Paco (Sergi López, PAN'S LABYRINTH) results in the birth of Ricky (Arthur Peyret) and soon both Paco and Lisa feel neglected by Katie. When Katie returns to work and Paco stays home to take care of Ricky, Katie discovers a bruise on one of Ricky's shoulder-blades which Paco cannot explain. When a similar bruise appears on his other shoulder blade, Kate accuses Paco of hitting their son and Paco packs up and leaves. Soon after, Ricky sprouts chicken-like wings from his wounds. Katie and Lisa keep this quiet and handle his new-found ability to fly (after his wings sprout features) by clipping a blanket over his crib during the night and padding both the baby and the furniture. Things get chaotic when the three go Christmas shopping and Ricky flies through the store. This is captured on mobile phones by hundreds of onlookers and the fire brigade is called to capture the flying infant. Katie balks at a doctor's desire to hospitalize the baby and study him and she, Lisa, and Ricky take shelter in their apartment from the hordes of reporters and curiosity-seekers outside. Paco returns and reunited with Katie, and they find themselves forced to decide how to care for Ricky. Another doctor suggests having the wings surgically removed, but Lisa seems to be able to communicate with the baby and knows what he really wants.

RICKY feels very slight for an Ozon film, possibly even a work-for-hire (the credits make no mention of Ozon's own production company Fidelite). Despite the narrative's overt magic realism elements, it is too adult for a family film with its fleshy if inexplicit love scenes, and the anxiety-inducing - surely for parents seeing their kids taking their first steps - scenes of the baby precariously flying and falling), but it is actually more complex than it seems on the surface. The conception and birth of Ricky seem miraculous by Ozon's compression of time during the first half of the film; the lack of surprise in the characters' reactions to seemingly sudden and abrupt turns of the plot betrays the greater passage of time rather than the editing. During this part of the story, we must also puzzle out where the pre-credits sequence fits into the body of the narrative. Lemy and Lopez give good performances, and the young Mayance is more than up to the task of her more complex role (Lisa complex love/indifference relationship with father-figure Paco is more subtly explored beneath the more fantastical story of Ricky, and Lisa's feelings for Ricky are also left for the audience to puzzle out for much of the film with the distraction of Ozon regular composer Philippe Rombi's suspenseful scoring). In the end, however, it feels a little like the Ozon equivalent of festival-bait than his more entertaining musicals.