“Bird” – Andrea Arnold returns beautifully to her social vein
Bird tells the tale of Bailey, a young teenager (Nykiya Adams) who, fascinated by birds, literally dreams of taking flight to escape the violent daily life of the English suburbs where she lives. In this new film, the filmmaker seems to take everything that has made up her cinema to the extreme. The abundance of elements of the scenery, for example, takes on a whole new dimension here – as does male violence, which she had never before shown that crudely. We also know the importance of the animal presence in the filmmaker’s work: from the bee in Wasp, a short film released in 2003, to the cow in Cow, the main protagonist of the documentary released in 2022. For Arnold, the animal always has a near mystical importance – the bear in American Honey or the horse in Fish Tank come to mind – like some silent supporter or alter-ego for her female characters. She films them as specters, in moments of static grace, with a subtlety that is unfortunately somewhat lacking in this new film.
The filmmaker brings together an entire bestiary in Bird: bird, butterfly, toad, dog and horse appear here and there, like an invisible horde supporting the young girl and turning the English suburbs into an enchanted world, where toads drool out precious substances if you sing some song by Coldplay to them. At least, that’s what Bailey’s father, played by Barry Keoghan, believes; as with the filmmaker’s previous male guest stars, he reveals himself brilliantly under her lens. In parallel with the violence of the human world – mainly male violence ) Andrea Arnold brings to life a life-saving universe, that of the beasts, “the little lives”, as the Italian poet Anna Maria Ortese calls them. The animal as a saving presence is personified by Bird – Franz Rogowski – the eponymous, volatile character who enters the teenager’s life to better extract her from it. When they first meet, the teenager, feeling threatened, pulls out her phone to film him, as she will do with her mother’s violent partner when he mistreats her little sisters. When she’s not filming to defend herself, Bailey obsessively films seagulls, which she then projects onto her bedroom ceiling. Like Bailey’s bird, cinema is a means of escape and resistance. A lovely – autobiographical? – tribute to cinema.
Bird by Andrea Arnold, with Nykiya Adams, Barry Keoghan, Franz Rogowski
Traduction Emma Frigo