From Cannes to Maine, from animation to animals, Director Richard Linklater tells stories.

Earlier this year in “A Scanner Darkly,” this director – who also brought us “The School of Rock” – led a star-studded cast through the drug-filled sci-fi make-believe streets of Los Angeles.

This week, in limited release, Linklater fictionalizes Eric Schlosser’s best-seller “Fast Food Nation,” a controversial nonfiction book published in 2001 that examined the labor, the processing and the marketing of this nation’s fast food industry.

A Cannes Film Festival reviewer suggested viewers think of the movie, which stars Patricia Arquette, Louis Guzman, Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Kris Kristofferson and others, as “‘Traffic’ with meat.”

According to the film’s Web site and early reviews of the work, the movie follows the path of a marketing executive employed by a fast food chain – Mickey’s – to the meat-packing plant in Colorado that supplies the beef for its burgers.

In a critical review, the Hollywood Reporter writes that the film “not only confirmed that many meat safety issues remain unsolved, but portrayed a country so addicted to grab-and-eat junk food that a fifth of its adolescents are obese and major health issues abound.”

Even so, the Reporter suggests that “our poor dietary habits, mistreatment of undocumented workers and cynical business practices are old news. The film plays better in Europe, where it says all the things people (t)here love to hear about America.”

McDonald’s has issued a statement in response to the film, pointing out its healthy menu options and attention to safe working conditions. And, food suppliers and agricultural associations, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, have launched a Web site that tells the “real story of the U.S. food system,” described as “among the safest, most affordable and most abundant food supplies in the world.”

On the Web:

www2.foxsearchlight.com/fastfoodnation/

www.bestfoodnation.com

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