Andrea Arnold is not the kind of director who keeps on making the same film. Instead the Englishwoman is one of those greats who with each film reinvent themselves.
Bird, the new film from Andrea Arnold: 'An odd one'
That also holds true for Bird, her new film in which an oddball accompanies a 12-year-old girl during her coming of age under terrifying circumstances. Those who skipped the amazing Cow thinking it was a simple documentary about a dairy cow have not seen an Andrea Arnold film since the striking road movie American Honey. She was regarded as Ken Loach’s heir apparent following her film Fish Tank (2009). But then she gave her own take on a genre drenched in poetic naturalism with the titillating and sublimely earthy Emily Brontë adaptation Wuthering Heights (2011).
In Bird, a story extracted from a raw reality, her restless yet constantly observant camera follows 12-year-old Bailey (played by the revelation Nykiya Adams). Bailey has to cope with a mother that barely wants her, a half-brother who brings order by force, and a father (Barry Keoghan) who hopes to finance his marriage to a new girl with the hallucinogenic slime of his toad.
On one of her daily wanderings, the girl reliant on herself, her wonder, and resilience comes across an eccentric young man (Franz Rogowski) who allows himself to be called Bird and who is looking for his parents. To fly away or not to fly away? If only it were a question.
Bird UK, dir.: Andrea Arnold, act.: Nykiya Adams, Franz Rogowski, Barry Keoghan, release: 1/1
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