Andrea Arnold's flawed modern fairy tale

In 2016, Andrea Arnold completed “ American honeya Midwestern road movie about a group of nomadic youths driving around selling magazine subscriptions. Despite the strong regional shift in perspective, the film is firmly in keeping with Arnold's distinctive kitchen realism: the lead role was played by non-professional actress Sasha Lane (while several others were sought for supporting roles), the dialogue was full of improvisations, and it was shot chronologically, to promote a greater sense of security among performers.

BirdArnold's first narrative film since then American honeymarks another surprising shift for the director: Instead of channeling the gritty naturalism that has served her career so well, she attempts a bizarre surrealism that feels exaggerated as a metaphor for survival. While Bird While he still has an interest in socially vulnerable characters, his point of view seems rooted less in authentic struggle and more in sensationalized arguments.

12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams in her first ever acting role) lives in a squat in Gravesend, Kent – on the coast east of London – with her young, tattooed father Bug (an expectedly to-the-point father). Barry Keoghan) and immoral older half-brother Hunter (Jason Buda). Bailey has a pervasive aura of unease, stemming from a critical lack of privacy (her “room” is merely a makeshift blanket fort) and heightened by the fact that the cramped quarters are now shared with Bug's future wife (Joanne Matthews) , who he has only been dating for three months. Worst of all, the tomboyish teenager is expected to don a gaudy leopard-print catsuit as a bridesmaid, leading to her chopping off her curly locks out of pure rebellion.

Given their objective lack of autonomy, Bailey is naturally fascinated by free-range creatures. She lovingly captures images of butterflies, bees, horses and of course birds on her iPhone, which she later views via a small projector in her fort. During an encounter with majestic ponies in an open field, Bailey crosses paths with a stranger wearing a kilt. Cautious at first – she even pulls out her cell phone to capture his face on camera in self-defense – Bailey is nevertheless charmed by the lithe, lisping man, who introduces himself as Bird (an unfortunately unbalanced Franz Rogowski).

Surprisingly, the two have an unexpected connection. Bird is searching for the father who abandoned him many years ago, and it turns out that the man's last known location is the building where Bailey once lived with her own mother, Peyton (Jasmine Jobson). has now lived with a perpetrator (James Nelson-Joyce) who terrorizes Bailey's much younger siblings. In her decision to assist Bird in his search, Bailey must also confront the family disruptions that essentially robbed her of a normal childhood. So it's particularly fitting that her new friend manages to express a cautious moodiness that Bailey hasn't enjoyed in a long time.

Bird begins as an overview of the misery and the characters who thrive in this chaos. There are moments of both desperation and levity – misguided children exacting brutal vigilante justice in an unjust world; Bug imports a rare toad whose hallucinogenic slime promises big money to help finance the wedding – but none of this rings particularly true. For a filmmaker otherwise committed to gracefully portraying vicious communities—even when their actions are morally shady—there's a surprising lack of nuance Bird.

But if one of Arnold's artistic specialties remains intact here, it's her impeccable sense of soundtrack. Bug belts out Fontaine DC's Irish post-punk anthem “Too Real” as he and Bailey zoom along on an electric scooter, the toad flying alongside in a plastic bag strapped to Bailey's wrist. “Looks like I'm going to make a lot of money!” Beetle screams into the desolate streets of Kent, confident that this amphibian will ease her financial problems. At another crucial point, Bug's villainous friends gather to serenade the toad with Coldplay's “Yellow” while trying to play generic tunes to get him to produce his coveted slime. (“How about 'Murder on the Dancefloor', that's shit!” a friend apparently jokes Salt burn Reference.)

Aside from Bailey, who juggles conflicting emotions with the convincing truthfulness of an unmoored teenager, none of the other characters are given enough room for further argument. Even Bug, whose parenting style vacillates between borderline abusive and lovingly affectionate, remains a complete mystery by the end of the film. His motives are never adequately explored, but then again, neither are those of other characters. Even Bird's backstory is tenuous and essentially irrelevant to the larger narrative, which eventually makes sense when his presence veers into the eerily surreal during the film's violent climax. If Arnold had even created an authentic portrait of this dangerous estuarine city and its inhabitants, the story's shift toward mythological fable might have felt more earned. As it stands, it reads more like a cliched fairy tale.

Arnold's previous feature, an intrepid documentary that follows the life cycle of a dairy cow, was simply titled Cow. The straightforward title promises an unvarnished look at the horrors of industrial agriculture that most citizens would prefer to remain hidden. Although this project also contains another one-word animal title, the coherence is very low Birdwhich sonically doesn't fit Arnold's entire oeuvre. While it also features non-actors and improvised exchanges, and returns to the director's native England to examine systemic failings, it doesn't feel indicative of a time, people or place that desperately deserves reassessment. Instead of humanizing his subjects—even when they turn out to be anything but—Bird chooses the caricature.

Director: Andrea Arnold
Writer: Andrea Arnold
With: Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski, Nykiya Adams, Jason Buda, Frankie Box, Jasmine Jobson, Joanne Matthews, James Nelson-Joyce
Release date: November 8, 2024